But then writer/director Rob Hedden learned the hard lessons of his ambitious, city-wide project. Instead of being able to film all over Manhattan, the budget restricted him to a couple of locations and extensive setups in Canada. Then the entire scope of the project was changed again, with much of the metropolitan material scrapped for a kids-on-a-graduation-cruise narrative. Add in the standard MPAA's vigilance over the amount of violence that could be shown and what started out epic ended up anemic. In fact, it's one of the worst films in the entire series.
Jason (Kane Hodder) is still stuck beneath the surface of Camp Crystal Lake, caught in the chains that have kept him underwater since the last film. When Rennie (Jensen Daggett) and her classmates rent a yacht for an impromptu end-of-school party/trip, they accidentally run across the crazed killer, having been set free by another ship's carelessness. Soon, the hockey masked monster is stowing away on their vessel and ready for action. Students start disappearing and this makes uptight teacher -- and Rennie's uncle -- Charles McCulloch (Peter Mark Richman) even more anxious. Eventually, the boat sinks and the survivors end up in NYC, with Jason hot on their heels.
With one of the worst endings ever for a Friday the 13th film (let's just say it involves the sewers, a stand-off, toxic waste, and some weird physiological time travel) and almost zero gore, there is nothing to recommend this eighth installment -- not for purists, not for the mildly curious, not even for the easily entertained or gullible. From the moment we return to the wooded confines of that infamous campsite, the scope of the surrounding waters increased to accommodate the boat-centric storyline, things go from indecipherable to dumb. Subplots stick out like sore, infected thumbs, psychological subtext reduced to bad childhood memories and the constant reminding of same. The actors try mightily, but Ms. Daggett is too lax and Mr. Richman too hammy to salvage the script.
Instead, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan becomes a classic example of the jaded genre cliché -- the scary movie bait and switch. We're promised a walk in Central Park. What we get instead is nearly 70 minutes of blood-free boredom onboard a ship before stuntman turned star Kane Hodder takes his first steps on solid soil. With Vancouver covering for most of the New York settings and a lack of genre inspiration, there is no chance of meeting the expectations suggested by the title.
But it's the aforementioned finale that really destroys whatever fanboy goodwill the previous seven films had built up, belittling everything we've ever known about the deformed kid turned hillbilly spree killer turned zombified nightmare. It plays like an attempted reset, a chance of starting from scratch and turning the creepshow king into a literal enfant terrible. It's insulting as a piece of narrative invention and almost blasphemous to the overall Voorhees mythos. Hopelessly mired in an unsalvageable lack of logic, we wind up with a disaster that barely dignifies the Friday the 13th label. Jason Takes Manhattan is bereft of imagination, originality, suspense, simple shock value, or any sense of scary movie fun.
