After ‘Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning’ failed to set the box office goers socks on fire, the decision was made to pull the plug on that particular pathway that would have seen Tommy Jarvis taking up the ‘Jason’ Mantle…And instead we arrive at ‘Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives’ probably the film I have the most complex relationship with out of the entire franchise.

The plot pretty much retcons the end of Part 5, opening with the news that in between the last film and this one, Tommy has been in a mental hospital and has somehow managed to convince a doctor or intern to bust him out as he feels a big part of overcoming his trauma from Jason, is to see Jasons dead body and destroy it, knowing once and for all that he really is gone.

The pair arrive at the cemetary, break open the casket and a maggot ridden Jason lies in wake. Tommy on seeing the body has a trauma response and immediately starts wailing on Jason with a metal rod, which by sheer bad luck, gets hit by lightning, ressurecting our Hocky mask weilding killer as an ultra strong and seemingly indestructable ‘Zombie’ varient (the varient that’ll now pretty much be THE Jason we have to deal with for every foreseeable entry).

Jason picks off Tommys friend and after a brief scuffle Tommy manages to make it back to his truck where he speeds into town to warn the police. Who immediatley brand him a wacko and lock him in a cell to be dealt with later.

Its here that the real plot kicks in as the sheriffs daughter is one of several teens heading up to the newly renamed Lake Forest Green (Formally ‘Crystal Lake’) to set up the camp ahead of a group of school kids turning up to enjoy summer shenanigans (I honestly cant believe it took 6 entries and 7 years to have a Jason movie set at a summer camp that ACTUALLY HAS kids at camp…wild…)

Anyway; Jason gets back into town, the sheriffs daughter meets Tommy and the pair hit it off, and the rest of the plots basically the usual runaround with Tommy trying to escape police custody to fight Jason and the campers finding the pointy end of Jason’s Machete.

And realistically; I find this film really quite polarizing. On the one hand, after ‘Part 5’, I find this script deathly dull. Barring the introduction of ‘Zombie’ Jason and a couple of tongue in cheek funny moments, I feel like the scripts tipped too far into comedy tonally and has wound up largely just being kind of irritating while also doing very little in the way of breaking new ground.

I get that with ‘Part 5’ being a commercial failure, that they wanted to play it overly safe for the next entry. But this is painfully generic as far as ‘Friday’ movies go. We’re back to councillors just filling time with talking fairly generic nonsense, uninteresting characters who exist just ‘because’, the kids might as well be inanimate objects for how much they bring to proceedings, the tone feels really off to me, not quite getting serious enough to leave me feeling like I watched a horror film, too irritatingly sitcom funny to really appeal in the other regard either.

The pacing is lumpy, distinctly uneven as we lurch from scenario to scenario and even though this is the shortest entry so far (clocking in at an hour and 27) it somehow feels longer than almost all the previous entries and could easily have lost 20 to 30 minutes with no significant loss to plot.

Contrasting the mediocre scripting however, we have arguably some of the best direction and cine that the series has ever (to date) had. Which is almost entirely down to Tom McLoughlin, the guy has a love of horror cinema and in particular a solid appreciation for the black and white era of horror.

This entry showcases that love with a stylization that is perfectly suited to the old ‘Universal’ monster movies of the 30s,40s and 50s. In fact McLoughlin has stated in interviews that the film was originally supposed to be presented in Black and white until the studio nixxed the idea at the 11th hour.

Its a visual feast with several iconic shots, some astoundingly original compositional choices and a keen eye to detail. The edit, while overlong is made of sequences that are very precisely managed, they breath nicely, keep a good pace and have a good comedic timing (even if the comedy itself is largely bad). its easily one of the prettiest Friday the 13th movies ever made in my opinion.

The performances are kind of middle of the road, our camp councillors might as well be avatars for the amount of emoting or deep character detail thats featured here. Most of that can be levvied at a script that seemingly was more interested in kills than making people stand out, but the cast too are fairly stiff, a bit flat on delivery, dont utilize their space as well as they could do and pretty much the second the credits had rolled, i’d already forgotten who they were…they’re that memorable.

The soundtracks ‘Iconic’ but I wont say its good. make of that what you will.

The concluding part of the ‘Tommy Jarvis’ trilogy is, to me at least; a somewhat tepid offering. Bringing a very strong visual identity to a script that really kind of missed the boat. The cast flounder through 87 minutes of this, with only Thom Mathews as Tommy himself managing to really keep the thing afloat.

I cant actively say this is a bad movie because of just how interesting and fun the visuals are and because of the loose handful of moments that are interesting in the script…But broadly speaking, this isnt one of my favourites and wouldnt be my first ‘go to’ pick for a ‘Friday the 13th’ marathon.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-part-vi-jason-lives/