TYTD Reviews

After being somewhat nonplussed by Rob Zombies remake of ‘Halloween’ I decided to plough on and see where he’d take the series in it’s follow up. The biggest draw was that some of the characters who were killed in the original, actually survived in Zombies version, and I was curious to see if they’d been saved for a specific reason, or if this film was going to drastically deviate from the original…and…well…yeh…yeh it does.

This film picks up 1 year on from the events of the first film, Laurie is now living with Annie and her father and the pair of them are rawdogging their trauma and having seizure inducing dreams about Michael coming to kill them.

Dr. Loomis, who in the previous entry was a little bit slimey, but still ultimately had his heart in the right place, is here just a full blown shill, looking to make a buck off the fact that he survived the night 15 people got straight up murdered.

These two plots trundle along without any interaction between the two, until literally the last few minutes of the film. As Halloween approaches, the dreams begin to become more vivid, as it turns out Michael isnt *quite* as dead as the people of Haddonfield would believe. Only now…he seems to be driven by the ghost of his dead mother and a white horse?…and they introduce this concept via a flashback to young Michael in the asylum…but it doesnt fit in with any of the other continuity?…and…yeah…I got nothing this things just too much.

At its core the biggest issue with ‘Halloween 2’ is its total and utter faux pretentiousness. The script reads like a badly made piece of fanfiction.com related narcissim run rampent and when it isnt indulging it’s innermost emo-ridden cravings, it feels like Zombie got bored with making a Halloween movie and instead decided to just…direct several mini music videos and short films which are inserted haphazardly into the already painfully bloated script.

This film sees a reintroduction of a supernatural element (a concept thats teased in the original halloween, and heavily used to disasterous effect in ‘Halloween 5’ and ‘Halloween 6’) In my opinion Michael Myers doesnt need any kind of supernatural evil cult association or murdeorus instinct driven by the ghosts of his stripper parents. To me? Michael is at his scariest when there isnt a specific target…or rather, the target is whoever is in his way. The idea that every Halloween this ‘shape’ emerges and relentlessly kills indiscriminantly until he’s saciated and can dissapear for another year IS what makes Michael as a character so unique and interesting. The idea that the blind evil is inherent to him, its what drives him, is the thing that sells me on him as a character.

Here? he’s reduced to a Jason Vorhees clone, driven by his mothers wishes in a vague attempt to reunite the family in the afterlife. Everything else is just poorly maintained window dressing.

I suppose beyond that, the script faults are numerous. For a start; the films RIDDLED with padding, ABSOLUTLEY CHOCKED FULL OF IT. several scenes turn out to be dreams (the worst fake out a horror movie can do) a lot of it is idle chatter that doesnt add anything to the main plot, NON….NON. Of the characters are even REMOTELY likeable. And i’m not saying that you have to have a likeable protagonist for the film to be successful, a lot of great works have traded on an all downer cast. But here; on top of not being likeable, they’re also just really REALLY boring.

Laurie does NOTHING except have multiple seizures and scream for most of the movie. Dr. Loomis as a character was slightly off putting in the first, but here is almost completely irradeemable. Michael has almost no personality and his goals are messy and unclear, and the film spends the vast majority of its time following these three characters in totally seperate situations, doing basically NOTHING right up until the last 20 minutes or so of the runtime.

The tonal issues that were present in the first film are still present here. It cant commit to what type of film it wants to be and how much it wants to be a slasher, a thriller or a super dark comedy…and as a result it just kind of…flails about for most of the runtime.

The continuity is totally borked too, dont expect any kind of coherency here. Characters can be in totally different parts of the country and shift entire states in a couple of minutes (as illustrated by the 3rd act where Loomis sees a breaking news bulletin about Michael from a hotel room having just given a talk show interview (presumably in LA) and in the very next scene, hes stood in a corn field in Haddonfield. Michael teleporting about is a bit more understandable, but even so; here, it gets rediculous.

Thats not to mention the totally uneven 3 act structuring, where AGAIN we find ourselves idling in a second act thats twice as long as the 1st and 3rd…and the AUDACITY of this film to have TEN MINUTES of credits. Thats a trick usually reserved for SOV films wanting to hit 80 minutes so they could get distribution. NOT the kind of thing you expect to see in a mainstream horror film studio release that’s ALREADY pushing one hour and 45 minutes (which for the record is WAY too long for a ‘Halloween’ film that has almost nothing to say)

Oh…and having seen that the theatrical and the directors cuts both have totally different endings, I checked them both out for completists sake. The theatrical cut ending is poor, the directors cut ending is slightly worse. I like neither, they both end in awful and totally uninspiring ways.

My issues with the direction and cine are the same as the previous ‘Halloween’ only here its quite ampliphied. everything is now even more desaturated than the previous entry, with blues, greens and blacks being about as good as it gets on a stylized colour front, it’s so badly corrected that the blood looks black for most of the films runtime. Everything is low-lit to the point that if you watch this as a streaming copy (as I did) even in HD, it looks compressed and becomes near impossible to figure out what your actually supposed to be looking at for most of the runtime.

The compositional issues I had with the original (chronic use of close ups and extreme closeups) are here compounded by strobing style editing that ‘flicker’ cuts several shots in quick succession creating a dizzying and unpleasent experience.

Theres an overeliance on Zombies love for german expressionism and kitsch vintage halloween fodder throughout. Which for, what must be either 1995 or 1996 within this film universe is just…odd. I know that the 90s did have a bit of a 60s revival going on at the time, but if you believe Rob Zombies take on 90s culture, every TV was playing either Fleischer cartoons or 60s and early 70s pop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. and this, combined with the aforementioned ‘music video esq’ dream sequences which…just feel like Zombies videos for his own music tracks. create a lumpy and tonally uneven experience I really want drawn to.

The edit is messy, has almost no breathing space, uses WAY too many shots compressed into a very narrow window of time. its an ugly movie, theres maybe 3 or 4 arrangements across the whole thing that could be considered ‘defining’ but that isnt necessarily a good thing…

Add into that that the performances continue their slow decline. Im convinced Sheri Moon Zombie is only in this film so that her SAG card could get renewed. She does NOTHING in this film other than stand next to a horse in a white dress. her scenes are incoherent to the main narrative, but to be honest. i’ve seen people try to argue and justify the significance of her role. I personally just see it as psudointellectualism at it’s most pompus.

Malcolm McDowell is easily the biggest waste of talent here, I genuinely believe that with a better character sheet, he could play a phenominal ‘Dr. Loomis’ but here? the characters an ass. he really brings that iteration of the character to life. But when you make someone so unlikeable AND make that character a main and pivitol role…well your asking for trouble.

Scout Taylor Compton, is once again wasted as Laurie. Only here, she has even less to do because…Whereas in the previous entry she at least had a bit of snark to fall back on. Here? she spends most of the movie either crying, flailing, having seizures or incoherently rambling about wanting to party. And thats about it. Shes very good at the physical side of this role…but her total lack of depth or range given to her hinders her wider performance.

And the soundtrack? is actually an improvement on the previous film, a gripe I had was that the scoring for ‘Halloween (2007)’ felt like it didnt include the original ‘Halloween’ scoring, until one of the producers told them they HAD to use it. resulting in a tonally weird experience where you’d get very 2000’s style jukebox scoring that would suddenly snap into LITERALLY the original 70s Halloween OST. it was quite a jarring experience.

With this entry, they’ve managed to all but remove that aspect. barring one or two key scenes, its a quite modern sounding score. it did help to tie things together a bit better. albeit given everything else thats going on in this film…that isnt much praise.

The difficulty I have really with ‘Halloween 2’ is that, had it not been a ‘Halloween’ movie…Had it just been a generic slasher with the killer, main characters and locations changed up. I think i’d have probably appreciated it a little bit more…

But as an ACTUAL ‘Halloween’ movie? its dreadful. It’s everything I hated about the ‘thorn trilogy’ dialled up to 11, but with the added kick to the nuts of all the characters being deeply unlikeable, the script having very little to say, the runtime being absolutely INSANE given what actually happens in the film, and the cine and direction being ugly to the point of near pain.

It makes me laugh really that they sincerely wanted to squeeze a third film out of this that would have released in 2015…the fact THIS movie got made is staggering to me. For the longest time, i’d cite ‘Halloween 5’ as being the worst film in the franchise. But I think by a VERY narrow margin thanks in part to the runtime. This film may have just pipped it to being the worst ‘Halloween’ film made to date.

When even a ‘Weird Al’ cameo cant save your movie…you KNOW things have gone VERY wrong.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween-ii/

Im not sure if the mid 2000’s was really the right time to do a ‘Michael Myers’ origin story…letalone to let Rob Zombie be the one to try and depict such an event…But the results here in the 2007 quasi-remake of ‘Halloween’ were mixed at best and left me kind of frustrated.

The plot is a near identical retelling of the 70’s classic, only here it’s been modernised (whereas the original opened in the 60s and takes place in the late 70s, here this film opens in the late 70s (apparently) and…seemingly takes place in the early 90s…) for this edition nearly all of the subtlety, nuance and tone has been sucked out and replaced by ‘easter eggs’ and callbacks to the first film, alongside Zombies usual heavy gore and swearing…Oh, and an extra 30 minutes has been bolted onto the front of the film depicting Michaels angst ridden preteens as he struggles with heavy DA, bullies and his love for torturing rats and cats…

Being truely honest, I struggled on almost every level to really get into this thing, the script itself is really quite over long when it really didnt have to be. The opening segment with young Michael, at first I felt was a nice touch, but it doesnt really tie in with the film in any way past Michael escaping Haddonfield hospital. thus making it pretty pointless.

The bulk of the film that acts as a remake to the original doesnt really bring anything new to the field (other than a healthy dose of homophobic and ablist slurs) and apart from a couple of scenes being swapped around and some of the key plot points getting a slight rework (an example being, in the original Michael breaks into a hardwear store and steals some rope and his mask, in this film Michel hides his mask under the floorboards of his old family home…where it sits seemingly untouched or undegraded for over 15 years…alongside a butchers knife that equally is pretty much unrusted…which is just ludicrous.)

The film seemingly doesnt seem to ‘get’ the characters…or rather, here they’re boiled down to their most basic elements. and those basic elements are then amped up to 10. So for example, Lynda was a slightly ditzy, slightly horny teen in the original…but there were layers to her character. Here…shes just horny and sarcastic…and little else. Laurie is supposed to be a wallflower, bookish, but able to stand up for herself if she needs to…here shes just a snarky, slightly aggressive teen. Lumis goes from being a doctor who’s exhausted and frustrated, but ultimately working to protect the community and ensure that his patient is locked firmly away..dead or alive.

To here being presented as a shill, someone who’s feined an interest in Michael to ultimately cash in on his story, there are some elements of compassion present, but its hard not to feel like everything he’s doing here, he’s basically logging so that he can write a revised edition of his cheap and sleazy novel. Which was particularly depressing.

Other than that, the script is just kind of lame really, as I’ve mentioned, it’s basically just a re-run of the original ‘Halloween’ but with more grungy rock aesthetics thrown in and all the complexities and subtleties taken out. The pacing is way too slow broadly speaking for something like this (it overstays its welcome) while ALSO asking the audience to make huge mental leaps to cover the gaps it cant be bothered to cover in the plot.

The tones kind of all over the place, it feels like a Zombie flick in places, with heavy gore being married up to border campy, heavy swearing, trailer trash black comedy. But then there are gulfs where it’s just retreading the old movie, where it feels like Zombie, the writers or the producers have made it clear those scenes are sacro-sanct and cant be analyzed or changed in any way from how they were in the original.

I didnt much care for the direction here, Zombies style seems to have been smothered to some degree, whether it was studio intervention or otherwise. Given his previous on ‘House of 1000 corpses’ and ‘The Devils Rejects’ I was expecting a colourful, gritty, grindhouse style reimagining of the original. But instead, this things drowned in that awful mid 2000’s trope of blue tinted largely desaturated footage thats handheld, shakey and a mixture of CONSTANT closeups and extreme closeups that arnt particularly focussed on anything, combined with overuse of B-roll and cutaways that make for a totally incoherent watch in places.

It really works against this film, because; while I cant say the various production elements havent worked together well, the end product they’ve produced is just plain ugly; and very out of spirit with what these kinds of movies really run on. They trade on suspense, subtlety and a slow boil thriller to help really upsell the slasher elements better.

Here? the style would have been better suited to some of the more mindless ‘hack and slash’ fodder of franchises like ‘Friday the 13th’ or ‘The Hills have eyes’ remake. it doesnt feel like a ‘Halloween’ film at any point here.

The cine is problematic, as mentioned composition is kind of lacking, theres no real main focal point for a lot of shots and seemingly the films coasting on nudity and gory kills to help keep people invested. Theres nothing striking about this film, nothing that really helps it stand out against the other turgid sea of entries that were made around this time. It’s just a fairly generic, fairly washed out grubby little horror movie.

The edits manic and lacks focus as well, a lot of the film feels like they just dropped whatever footage they had down on the timeline to get things up to a near 2 hour runtime, and the chronic issues of incredibly slow scenes with breakneck cuts, just left me feeling tired by the end.

Equally; I have to say that…this thing is nearly 2 hours long. NO ‘Halloween’ movie should be nearly 2 hours long. And its a serious fault on the film makers that to have allowed that to happen.

The performances are mixed too. Malcolm McDowell I feel gives a solid performance as Lumis. He’s animated, bright and has a good mix of tone. It’s just a shame that the CHARACTER of Lumis here is so one note and against what the original really worked as. I feel had McDowell had the chance to play OG Lumis, this could have been a very different feature.

Scout Taylor Compton as Laurie again has similar issues to McDowell, had she been allowed to play the role with a bit more of a muted and subtle edge to it I feel she really could have brought her own energy to the character, as it stands the way her character is written here, she could have been the ‘final girl’ in almost ANY low budget horror production from 2002-2009…meaning that she’s at best; annoying for most of the runtime, and at worst; forgettable.

The rest of the cast are really quite one note, dont really bring anything to the production, are very muted; dont really get to use their space much and generally are introduced just to be killed off within 10 minutes…it’s depressing to sit through honestly…especially given the calibre of some of the casting choices here (Danny Trejo, Ken Foree, Udo Kier). And I still find it hilarious that Rob casts his wife in every film he makes…whether she fits the bill or not….here? she doesn not.

As a closing note, the soundtracks awkward and inconsistent; some of the movie is a bit of a Jukebox picture with ‘Dont fear the reaper’ getting multiple outings (hey! remember how it was playing on the radio in the original? Well; its gonna play at least 3 times here!) alongside modern (90s) tracklistings that dont really add anything to the production and…for some bizarre reason, the original Halloween soundtrack cues…unaltered. Which…given Rob Zombie is a musician, and given that this film is a gritty 2000’s remake of the original. Im BEYOND surprised he didnt ‘grime’ up the original audio cues…maybe add a heavier; rockier edge to them or something…as it stands it just feels like a swill bucket of available tracks and attempts to please the fans.

All in all? While there are elements I liked with this one, there really wasnt enough to win me over. the scripting is overly pandering, overly long and kind of boring, the characters have been dumbed down to the point where I dont care if they live or die, the camera work is messy, the whole thing looks dull and lifeless and its tied together with lacklustre casting and a questionable tracklisting.

I didnt really care much for ‘Halloween (2007)’ Its not the worst, and i’d say its maybe worth checking out at least once as an oddity…But its not one i’ll be hurrying back to, and it isnt one I can really recommend…

Oh yeah…and the best line in this thing? is ‘IM JOE GRIZZLY, BITCH!’…me and my partner laughed our asses off at that for a good 2 minutes solid…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween/

A Clint Howard special here make no mistake, ‘Evilspeak’ is a solid Video Nasty that I didn’t really like the first time I saw it, but really quite enjoyed this time around.

The plot, a military school student (and orphan) Stanley Coopersmith is hated by almost everyone at the academy from the students to the teachers. He’s at an all time low, when he discovers a hidden room in the basement of the Catholic Church based inside the academy that houses a large number of satanic texts scribed in Latin.

Stanley translates one of the books and discovers that he can have immense power if he performs a black mass. As Stanley begins to explore satanism and its power, his bullying on all fronts grows and grows, until he finally snaps, with terrifying results.

The script isn’t the sharpest in the world, I felt it was a little too slowboil and the demonic element of the film is heavily underplayed. Which is a shame, but contrasting that the characters are complex and well written, with solid dialogue, the tone is near perfect for this and its ultimately a quite satisfying film, even if its a bit slower than I would have liked.

The directions pretty solid, it’s a Warner production, so it’s of quality, I don’t feel it quite exceeds *the standard* though.

The cine is a little bland on the colour front, but is creative and has some pretty solid sequence building. There are some ropey effects though that do downgrade things somewhat.

Performances are great, they’re no believable at all, but Clint Howard’s good fun and overall I enjoyed what I saw.

And the scores solid.

Its a bit slower than I’d have liked, a bit dry on the cine and he performances are a bit of a mixed ability room. But overall I thought Evilspeak was one of the better Nasties of the time. Easily in the upper half quality wise. And it’s one that, while I didn’t out and out love it. I could recommend it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evilspeak/

And so, we arrive at the final FINAL chapter in the original ‘Friday the 13th’ series. ‘Jason X’ an entry that is to the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise, what ‘Halloween Ressurection’ is to the ‘Halloween’ franchise.

The plot? Its a non descript point in the near present, logically this takes place after ‘Freddy Vs Jason’ that would mean these events were happening in 2004. But this came out before FvJ and the last time we saw Jason was in 1993 (or 1995 ‘in film’ timelines) being dragged to hell by Freddy. So god knows when this is happening. A five year window between 2000 and 2005.

Jasons been captured after killing over 200 victims. he’s restrained in a military facility awaiting cryogenic freezing. The idea being that, due to his (seeminlgy new found) ability to regenerate his cells. he’s basically unkillable, and as the military cant find a way currently to finish him off, they’re just gonna pop him in the freezer till they CAN find a way to kill him in the future.

However, a rogue faction of the army has other ideas and want to try and weaponize Jason, so they bust him out. Theres a fight and both him and a female agent end up locked into a cryo tank and frozen. They’re found several hundreds of years into the future, by an expedition exploring a now totally ravaged planet earth. they’re bought onto their spaceship, thawed out and almost immediately Jason starts murdering again.

With the ship returning to ‘Earth2’, it becomes a race against time to stop Jason, before theres noone left to return home. Oh! and in the last 25 minutes he gets ‘upgraded’ into a solid metal demon murderer (If the poster didnt spoil that enough).

I really dont know how to feel about this one honestly, while im glad they’ve put the whole ‘supernatural’ aspect of the series on ice as things were getting a bit silly. There isnt really a whole lot going on here and some of the decisions that have been made havent aged all that well.

For a starters, this films tone is now way more in line with a campy horror comedy than a horror film with light comedy elements (as has been the case since ‘Part 6’) Where it works, its actually quite good fun. But the humour in this thing is incredibly cringy at times and it never quite seems to really settle on how far to go into the comedy aspects. A silly recreation of the sleeping bag kill from part 7 is fun. a weird psudosexual skit about magnetic nipples…less so.

Its absolutely a product of it’s time. Painfully early 2000’s in fashion, style and tone. I can appreciate that, but it makes the future scenes feel very dated at this point and where this thing creaks…it cant be unseen.

The script itself is actually kind of drab, barring a few funny cameos and a handful of jokey moments, this is really quite a flat script, the characters all feel mismatched given they’re supposed to be a professional expedition. The ship offered a great opportunity for some close quaters, suspensful thriller elements to help tie this slasher back to it’s origins of parts 1-3. But it’s all by the numbers. Jason wanders around the ship, slowly picking people off with little in the way of interesting kills or dialogue to help break the flow (with the obvious exception being the ‘deep freeze’ kill near the beginning.

I think my biggest problem with this is, just as it seems to be working up some steam to really get the thing going. It ends. Not a lot of interest really happens until we’re past the hour mark and the films act structuring is really uneven. With an opening act that lasts about 10 minutes, that gives way to a 2nd act that runs right up to the 70-80 minute mark and just idles into repetative and not particularly interesting kills. the third act DOES change things up a bit, but it mainly just gets incredibly dumb (in the best possible way I should add) leading to an ending thats kind of shrugworthy (I should also say, this film possibly has the worst ‘end credits’ for a horror film i’ve ever seen. No style, just ‘times new roman’ in white, on black with a overly quiet rock track. DULL.

The characters arnt that interesting, dont get developed very much and dont feel like they really exist in this space, and barring the comedy (my personal favourite being ‘Hocky was outlawed in 2024…’ I look forward to next year…) there just isnt a lot here.

The direction is PAINFULLY 2000’s in all the worst excesses. Im kind of glad we’ve moved on from this feeling like a generic ‘Made for TV movie’ as was the case with ‘Jason goes to hell’, but in it’s place we now have a film that feels like a ‘Sci-fi channel movie’. with really cheap and nasty looking CG effects, tiny poorly dressed sets, everything having a cheap plasticky looking feel to it and the ‘styalization’ basically just being ‘tint it blue…nice.’

I mean, the cast and crew do seem to work well together and whats delivered is absolutely of a ‘passable’ quality. But I just feel like so much more could have been done to really help give this thing polish.

On the cine front, decently composed shots are often hindered by the colour correction or CG, but theres some really cool ideas present here and the sequences are well edited, well structured and tell the story cleanly…well…up until the 3rd act where it feels like large chunks of the movie have gone missing (an example being the scene where Jason is ‘upgraded’, they show a shot of the computers running the upgrade ‘erroring’ and saying it needs to find ‘supplamentary materials’ to do the upgrade, the next scene; without explanation, Jasons got metal armour and is up and running with no issue…its odd.)

It has atmosphere, but the overreliance on digital effects has caused this film a lot of issues…Also; I have to say that ‘normal’ Jason in this film, is absolutely one of the worst looking designs of the entire franchise. It looks like a dollar store approximation of an ‘official’ Jason costume…and had it not been for ‘Exploded sausage’ Jason from ‘Jason goes to hell’ it would in fact be THE worst look that Jasons had in the series to date. ‘Uber Jason’ looks pretty cool though.

The performances are kind of middle of the road, not the worst the franchise has seen, but far from the best. I feel they lack a level of depth that really would have helped me get on with them better. And by the time Jasons up and running, i’ve already kind of gone off the main cast, which means I was less invested when they started to get picked off. They do okay, they have a good level of physicality, they use props and set space very well…I just feel like they didnt bring the A-game to this one.

And the scorings awful. It sounds like an ‘Asylum’ films take on star trek. dire.

I think, at the time, had the team behind this film realised that it would be the last ‘Proper’ Friday the 13th film in the original series…and the last Friday film till the 2009 reboot, they’d have maybe done things a little bit differently. As it stands ‘Jason X’ is a film that showcases some of the worst excesses of 2000’s studio film making, and while I will admit It absolutely has entertaining moments. I dont think this would be one i’d immediately grab if I wanted to catch a ‘Friday’ movie.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/jason-x/

A short but sweet one from me! ‘Savage Harvest’ is a 70(ish) minute long SOV supernatural horror film that basically feels like what would happen if you put ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Scalps’ in a blender.

The plot? a group of teens (20 somethings) head into the woods for a weekend of fun at a cabin, at which point one of the gang explains that many years ago the land they stood on was host to a group of native americans who split off from their main group to hide from colonists, they went deep into the mountains, and after some time accidentally stumbled on black magic teachings, slowly the tribe learnt the ways of Black magic and it consumed them, turning them into demons who are survived by magic stones.

Anyway; as you can imagine the gang find the magic stones and what follows is the ‘Evil Dead’ style ‘base under seige’ narrative, as everyone in the woods turns into possessed demons with ‘scalping’ on their minds, while whats left of the gang desperately try to figure out a way to break the curse.

And honestly? theres not much more to it than that, the scripts rather unoriginal in it’s plot, but it handles what it does pretty well, at 70 minutes I really cant grumble about the pacing and the tones pretty consistent throughout as well. The characters get a bit of development, but dont get bogged down in complexities…realistically because most of them dont make it to the end credits. Its a solid enough script, it just doenst really do anything to really truely break the mold.

The direction and cine are VERY heavily influenced by music videos (no surprise as the director primarily worked in music videos around this time) because of this, a lot of the movie does look quite a bit more stylish and coherent than a majority of other SOV movies floating around at this time.

However; this is a double edged sword as while having a style is nice, at times this film MASSIVELY overdoes it on trying to styalize the thing, at the cost of coherency to the script. it tries to make the visuals SO out there, there there are scenes where I did wonder if there was a point to it, or if the director just wanted to flex for a bit.

Compositions solid for SOV, I’d put this in the upper half quality wise for the genre, and the edit is a bit heavy handed, but ultimately tight enough to keep the show running, while breathable enough to allow the scenes to not lose focus.

the performances are pretty poor, even for SOV standards, but there are some glimmers of good moments here where we get to see some okay performances and some quite lively animation. The gore shots in particular are handled extremely well (if nothing else, this film looks nice and has VERY over the top and entertaining kill sequences).

The soundtracks pretty solid too, I believe it was done by some bands the director was working with at the time, and its suitably rocky for the over the top-ness this film presents.

All in all; I cant say this is an essential watch, nor can I say its an essential SOV flick. But it does what it sets out to do, which is worthy of praise…admittedly it is a little short on originality and it really doesnt push the boundaries of what its trying to do, but I could see this pairing up well with one of J.R bookwalter or maybe a Ron Ford flick.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/savage-harvest-1994/

Nostradamus has got NOTHING on Mike Judge. NOTHING.

Idiocracy is a *supposed* work of fiction by Judge depicting a scenario whereby, due to smart people overthinking there issues, and idiots breeding like rabbits; all smart people die off, leaving only the bottom of the barrel. The film follows Joe and Rita, Joe is in the military and has been selected to undergo a top secret scientific experiment to freeze soldiers in the prime to be used in times of emergency. Joe was specifically chosen due to his total averageness across the board. in every single field from intelligence to physical fitness, he’s average. he’s also a total loner, so noone would care if he dissapeared.

Rita by contrast is a sex worker, who’s been hired in by the army due to a lack of willing female cadets. The pair get frozen only to find that in the interim a mass scandle relating to the lead scientist on the project is uncovered and the experiment gets abandoned…only they forget about Joe and Rita. Who wake up 500 years into the future to a society thats entirely run by the bottom of the barrel, and where intelligence is basically seen as snobby.

And man oh man, if this thing wasnt the canary in the coalmine. I’ve known people cite ‘Idiocracy was supposed to be a warning, not a documentary’ since the early 2010’s at least, but it IS genuinely surprising to see just HOW FAR we as a species have fallen in as little as 20 years.

Indeed, at times, scenes that would have been pure comedy back in 2006, are now eerily honest recreations today. And I find it fascinating.

To keep it brief, I enjoy the work of Mike Judge, this thing has a force of a script behind it, with razor sharp pacing, wickedly dark comedy tones and a deafly dryness to it that’s acidic as it is hilarious. Its playing as a kind of hybrid ‘Beavis and Butthead’/’King of the Hill’ stupid comdey to dry comedy and the contrast is wonderful.

The film still holds up on the direction and cine front, with some wonderfully daft ideas and design choices, this thing has a great styalization that is only now beginning to look a little creaky as CGI advances drastically.

The cast are, PERFECT. PERFECTLY timed, PERFECTLY animated and PERFECTLY in control of the scenes and how to time the punchlines, I honestly dont think it could have been cast better.

‘Idiocracy’ was and continues to be an astounding piece of cinema, a truely scary look into exactly where we’re heading if we continue the backslide down the toilet we’ve been drifting into for the past 30 years.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/idiocracy/

After a HELL of a consistent run in stories between 1980 and 1989, I find it somewhat disheartening that the first studio outside of Paramount to touch the ‘Friday the 13th’ franchise, not only managed to completely misunderstand the brief, but veer so wildly against what the franchise is actually about that its actually kind of impressive that it managed to fail *quite* so spectacularly for me.

The 9th entry in the ‘Friday the 13th’ series, ‘Jason goes to hell is detached from the rest of the series. Is seemingly set in 1993 (despite the last entry having taken place in 1994) and is effectively an attempt at kinda sorta half heartedly rebooting the franchise.

The…frankly bizarre plot is thus, it’s 1993, the legend of Jason Vorhees has plagued the residents of the nearby town surrounding Crystal lake for over 10 years at this point. So…in order to put this thing to bed once and for all, the FBI organise a mass SWAT intervention at Crystal lake, they send a woman up there to get naked (thats…literally all she does) which instantly summons Jason (who here looks like a badly packed sausage…for some reason…) The woman lures him out into an open field, where it’s revealed its all a trap and swarms of FBI agents open fire on Jason, LITERALLY blowing him up into tiny pieces.

They all celebrate a job well done, but obviously this movie isnt 10 minutes long (god I wish it was) and so instead, Jasons remains are scooped up and bagged…including his heart, which is still weirdly beating, and continues to do so all the way to the morgue. Once at the morgue the resident patholgist documents Jasons body, but Jasons still beating heart somehow mezmorises and hypnotises the pathologist who, without warning, picks the heart up and eats it…thus becoming possessed by the spirit of Jason Vorhees.

We then cut to the town outside of Crystal lake where a bounty hunter by the name of Duke is on the hunt for Jason, convinced he isnt dead and looking to finish the job. At the same time a local by the name of Steve freeman is driving the highways outside of crystal lake when he picks up some partying teens who are planning to head to the lake to do LOTS of naughty things now that Jason cant get them.

While dropping them off at the lake however, the possessed pathologist turns up, butchers them and starts heading back into town. Steven and Duke wind up in jail accused of the teens murders where its revealed that Duke knows whats going on, and informs Steve that Jason has living relatives, and that those relatives are the only ones who can put an end to him once and for all.

Theres certain things I come to a ‘Friday the 13th’ movie for, and I should clarify at this point that im not a stickler for ‘sticking to the formula’ dont get me wrong, im HAPPY for some new ideas to be injected into franchises as I feel it gives them new lifeblood.

But the choices made in ‘The Final Friday’ to me at least, show a fundamental misunderstanding of Jason as a character. In essence the films 1 part ‘Childs Play’ to 1 part ‘Evil Dead’ to 1 part ‘Halloween 2’ with a smidge of the old ‘Demon possession’ genre sprinkled in for good mix.

We dramatically shift from a series that has THE most simple plot point in horror movie history (invincible killer takes vengence on improper teens because as a child, teens behaving badly led to his death.) to a total abandonment of that, and embracing of the supernatural and very little else. This is literally just 90 minutes of people pretending to be Jason, with some bollocks about ‘half sisters’ and ‘previously unknown babies’ thrown into the mix. NON of this has EVER even BEGUN to be hinted at in the previous 8 installments. and the fact that the film ITSELF doesnt seem to know exactly what it’s main characters history is, nor does it solidly want to commit to anything, is concerning.

The thing reeks of ‘TV Movie’ vibes, with large gulfs of nothingness being punctuated by totally meaningless gore (apparently theres an extended cut that doesnt nothing else but put MORE meaningless gore in…yay…) the plot is just silly by this point. It seems they only put the ‘teens partying at crystal lake’ angle in because all they knew was they had to have teens attacked at crystal lake or the fandom might complain.

The pacing is a turtles crawl, the tone is all OVER the place and equally confusing. Theres no clean act structures here everything is just seemingly happening all at once with no rhyme or reason. the characters are all unlikable mostly and feel undercooked.

Honestly? if I were to speculate. This feels like a rejected ‘Halloween’ script (Michael gets killed, ressurects in random bodies and Laurie has to protect her daughter and grandchild from him) that, once it got rejected was reworked into a ‘Jason vs Tommy Jarvis’ script…which also got rejected before finally being settled in as a retooled version that crams ‘Childs Play’, ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘hellraiser’ easter eggs in to try and keep the audience on side. I mean…this is the entry that tries to insinuate that Jason is some kind of ‘Deadite’…if you need any more evidence for how little the scriptwriters understood the source material…there you go.

the direction and cine are of studio standard. but poor, it’s heavily styalized, but everything so darkly lit and shot its hard to figure out exactly whats going on on screen. the sequence building is messy and unconventional, it feels like entire scenes of explanation have been left on the cutting room floor, ‘Exploded sausage’ Jason is EASILY the worst design the series has ever had. he looks like someone put a slab of spam in a boiler suit.

Everything just has this overhanging ‘made for tv’ vibe to it, and I cant shake it, the quality has downgraded SO MUCH in 4 years. It really feels like this was just shot on a backlot somewhere using whatever tools the director could get his hands on.

The cine is poorly composed, badly edited together with an overeliance on cutaway footage to try and make this nonsensical shoot make sense. Theres little in the way of iconography, though the film does introduce Jasons fathers name into the franchise…though…it doesnt do anything with that information sooo….

Outside of Duke (whos basically just a sociopath) I couldnt tell you a single thing about the performances here, SO unmemorable they are that as soon as the credits rolled, i’d already forgotten half the character names. They’re stiff, with awkwardly delivered dialogue, they dont animate facially and it’s really hard to even begin to care for them. Performances in the ‘Friday the 13th’ films have always struggled to really deliver on character…but this is WELL beyond poor, even when compared to the poorer offerings in previous entries.

Even the soundtrack takes a hit, with cheap and nasty synthy sounding 90’s-ified takes on that lovely 80’s orchestral style that the original films had. its awful.

I always try to praise a film that tries something thats different from whats been established before it. But at the same time, certain acknowledgements DO have to be made when dealing with a franchise, and here? It feels like the producers just had a load of scripts and pitch ideas floating about, got he F13 license and decided to rush something out ASAP by blending all their pitches into a slurry of a story.

Surprisingly I actually tolerated this film better this time around than the first time I saw it, the first time I saw it my DVD copy of the movie made a direct beeline out of my dvd player and into my bin in one smooth glided motion before the credits had even begun to run.

Easily the worst ‘Friday the 13th’ movie i’ve seen to date, ‘Jason goes to hell’ deserves to be dropped in your nearest well…preferrably as soon as possible.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/jason-goes-to-hell-the-final-friday/

After ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ helped put ‘Hammers’ horror wing on the map, it was all but inevitable that a sequel would be forthcoming. And lo, 12 months after the original, we have ‘The Revenge of Frankenstein’ a MORE than worthy sequel to the original that manages to quite literally ressurect the franchise from the dead!

The film opens where the first film immediatley left off, with Frankenstein heading to the guillotine for his crimes in messing with human nature (and all them murders wot he done.) But just before the Guillotines blade gets in his way…By some…mad antics. He’s managed to swap himself with the priest who was in his cells.

Yes! Frankenstein lives! and having moved to a small village in another part of the country and adopting a psudonym. He’s continuing his experiements into ressurecting the dead, and building the perfect living creature. He’s managed to set himself up as a new town doctor, and his efficiency in treating patients is the talk of the town (and a great scourge to the towns medical council who dislike how private he is)

It attracts the attention of recently graduated student Dr. Kleve who immediately puts 2 and 2 together and realises that the new doctor in town IS Frankenstein…and after some very mild blackmail, the pair form an alliance. With Kleve assisting Frankenstein in his latest experiment (building the perfect body for a heavily disabled work assistant) and in return Kleve learning all about Frankensteins work and NOT turning him into the authorities.

The rest? well…im sure you can figure out what happens if you put Dr. Frankenstein in charge of a major hospital of sick patients while he works on rebuilding his lifes work. Chaos, carnage and good times for all!

And I honestly really quite enjoyed this one. The script feels ‘Of’ the originals universe without it feeling like a retread of the original. Its main plot line basically answering the question ‘What if Frankensteins work HADNT been interrupted by Paul in the original?’ and I found it fascinating to see how things might have played out differently.

The script does seem tonally a little lighter than the first entry, the more horror driven moments do still have a distinct Macarbre touch to them, but there is a slightly heavier campy aspect to this one that I think nicely contrasts the events of the film.

Theres a bit more of a shift away from the stuffier aspects of victoriana dialogue and more emphasis on the actual characters this time around. Theres also at least a couple of characters brought in almost solely for comedic effect. Im still on the fence about those moments…

Outside of that however, pacings as rock solid as ever, the film once again has a clean 3 act structure that transitions effortlessly across its acts, and it manages to keep the 3 acts fairly equal too. the tone feels a little more footloose than the last entry, but that isnt strictly a problem. I quite like that they expand on and develop the character a bit more here than in the original. Its honestly just a really great and fun little work, that I dont think *quite* matches the original quality wise…But comes pretty bloody close!

One thing of note, that I did find a bit weird…is just HOW many times the script mentions how dirty the people in the movie are. A HUGE chunk of the runtime is given up to talking about dirty patients, dirty locations, digging in literal dirt, jokes about dirty members of the public. its pretty relentless, and I can only assume that, because the first film didnt really mention Hygeine at all, this films had to cram 2 movies worth of ‘dirty peasent’ talk into one movies runtime.

Direction wise there has been a bit more of a shift into the gothic, the first entry was a fairly well lit affair that felt more like a period piece in tone rather than a horror film. This film transitions us nicely into a heavy horror styalization. The gothic horror vibes are out in full force as we enter a chronically night time based picture, with grubby locations, dark and macarbre set spaces, with only the flourescent beakers of mysterious bubbling fluid offering any vibrant colours from this picture thats awash in midnight blues, mouldy greens and dingey yellows.

The cast and crew work in near lock step here, delivering an end product that I think actually surpassses ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ on a technical level. it shows the team learnt a lot in there first couple of the ‘Universal’ adaptations and now they’re able to hit the ground running. it looks superb.

Same goes for the cine, which is a LOT tighter than the original, shots are incredibly well composed, with decent uses of the rule of thirds and blocking. they really set the shots up to make the colours pop and the attention to detail and creative experimentation present is an absolute delight.

All of this of course is wrapped up in an edit that perfectly paced, has the exact amount of breathing space to let the edit do the heavy lifting it needs to and is open to creative experimentation. It keeps a perfect sense of timing and ends EXACTLY as I feel it needed ot.

Performance wise, we have another fantastic turn from Peter Cushing, who’s take on the Baron here is one thats now a much more calculating and considered person than his first outing. he doesnt quite get the range work that the original allowed him, but what he delivers here are easily some of his finest moments.

Credit also has to go to Michael Gwynn as the assitant turned creature Karl Immelmann. This creature gets to talk and we get to explore what he makes of his new ‘humanity’ in all its horrible, real and complex detail. He DOES get a good range to work with in this one and he absolutely delivers on the brief, a stunning performance and easily one of the biggest reasons to check this movie out.

The rest of the cast are all equally fantastic too, I think they’re even a bit of an upgrade over the previous film, where there was a certain degree of stiffness. Here? they’re all perfeclty animate, use the set space really well, and it’s nice to see the camera work match pace to such an animated cavelcade of talent.

While ‘The Revenge of Frankenstein’ doesnt *quite* line up to the greatness of the original. the gap of difference between them is eyewateringly close. had it not been for a couple of strange script choices and a toning down overall of the ‘Hammer blood’ and colour I think this could have easily been the better of the two.

Absolutely worth checking out. Highly recommended. I loved this one, and I regret not having seen it sooner quite honestly.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-revenge-of-frankenstein/

Acting almost like an alternate universe take on ‘Children of the corn’ that answers the question ‘What if the grownups just…didnt give in to the weird childrens bullcrap?’ ‘Beware: Children at play’ feels all too familiar in the ground its treading and the genres its working with. But that doesnt stop it from occasionally striking out on its own.

This is a horror film with a streak of jet black comedy running right through it, and honestly having seen that this is generally distributed by Troma films…A lot of this movies style quickly made sense.

The plot? a perfectly normal family are heading to a small town out in the backwaters to hang out with friends, on the way they stop to help an aging religious fellow who’s heading in the other direction who basically insults most of the townsfolk our leads are heading towards, calling the religious yokels who’ll easily part with their cash the second ‘God’ comes into the equation.

They help him on his way, but on arriving in the town they find out pretty quickly that things arnt right. A large number of children have dissapeared over the past few months/years and a series of bizarre murders have been taking place. It doesnt take long for the film to reveal that the missing children are in fact the ones doing the murdering, and they’re doing so, so that they can feast on the flesh of their victims and use the corpses in satanic rituals.

Its implied heavily that their may be some kind of demonic force at play, and when our ‘normal families’ daughter ends up being abducted by the cannibal murderous children. It sends the father down a rabbit hole of detective work alongside the police to find out where the missing children have gone to, what their end goal is and how further dissapearences and murders can be stopped. All leading to probably this films most infamous sequence, a GRAND finale that even today could be seen as quite shocking and surprising.

I think one of the biggest problems this film has really is its script. This really REALLY feels like it cribbed 90% of its plot from ‘Children of the Corn’ (its basically the core plot, but with the religious overtones tuned down to a more neutral position…and of course, the adults are still alive at this point, whereas the original kills all the grown ups off pretty quickly) It’s lack of originality on that front is actually kind of astounding, im surprised Stephen Kings lawyers didnt step in honestly.

But even overlooking that fact, the first hour or so of this hour and 40 movie is just really kind of slow and dull, it’s largely exposition dumping from our main characters who take WAY too long to cotten onto the fact that it’s the missing kids doing the killing, and a large chunk of the runtimes dedicated to wandering around in the woods or scenic shoots, and not much else. By the time the film DOES finally fully get into gear, theres about half an hour left, and while that closing half hour IS really REALLY good fun. It just kind of left me wondering why the rest of the film WASNT.

Pacing is fairly pedestrian for the first two acts of this thing, it crawls from location to location with only the occasional garish gory kill to help keep this thing from becoming a sedative. the kills themselves are cheap and cheerful (they reminded me a lot of SOV style effects) but they’re fun enough and do help drive up the campiness of the whole thing. the tone is very paletable, balancing VERY bleak horror elements to quite wonderfully self aware and tongue in cheek black comedy. This is a movie that isnt afraid to be a bit silly in places and his happy to push the envelope, and its no surprise to me at all that the UK seemingly never got this movie.

The act structuring is clean, if not a little slow, transitions are a little heavy handed, but they work fine enough. I just…really wish they’d tried to make this film a bit more unique. Had the tone and pacing of the last act been replicated for the first two, this would have been much MUCH higher rated for me. As it stands, it’s never a good look when I have to ask the person im recommending this film to, to ‘Stick with it for the first 50 minutes, because after that, it gets SO much better!’

Direction and cine are pretty solid, Its nothing massively groundbreaking, but for the lower budgeted side of movie making, theres a fairly subtle style here that helps tie the whole movie together, the kills are cheap, but help carry the vibe, the teams all seem to be working in relative harmony together, the cast are all seemingly pretty well involved with the director, who seems to have helped guide them through each scene. The child actors here do seem to struggle a bit more with the exact direction, but given the adult themes present (I.E trying to articulate to a 5 year old how to die on screen and make it look real) Im not too surprised that its a bit of a mixed ability room.

The cine again is to standard, shots with okay composition, theres a little bit of experimentation thrown into the mix. Honestly, i’d like to have seen WAY more here to really help boost its identity, but it’s ‘To standard’ which, while better than nothing, is still a little dissapointing.

The edits slow, has plenty of breathing space and honestly could have lost 15-20 with no issues at all. B-roll seems to be a little thin on the ground as, while the effort was made to capture close ups and some scenes have coverage for alternate angles, a lot of scenes have been left high and dry, with minimal cutaway footage and not a whole lot available to help keep the momentum of the film going. It really could have done with another couple of passes to help get it optimally timed.

Ultimately?; While this one DOES have its fun moments here and there, and that ending is still quite unbelievable (im VERY surprised the MPAA passed it) there just isnt really a whole lot here to warrent it being recommended. it feels very heavily influenced by quite a few movies that were out at the time and that lack of originality, married up to some fairly generic direction, cine and performances just makes a film that left me quite literally thinking ‘welp…that was a movie’ by the time of the end credits.

Not an essential watch, i’d say if you DID like the ‘Children of the corn’ movies and just basically want more of that. Here you go. if your looking for something that feels very different to the usual mid tier horror offerings, this wont scratch that itch.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/beware-children-at-play/

And so, we reach the end of ‘The Paramount Years’ for the ‘Friday the 13th Franchise. and what better way to send the franchise off with a bang than by setting the film the furthest you could possibly get from Jasons natural habitat and then grossly misleading the audience in the marketing!

Because ‘Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan’ Should really be called ‘Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason takes over a small cruiser and then bumbles about Manhatten for 35 minutes’ Because thats basically what this movie is.

The film opens with a quick recap of the history of the series up to this point, as we join a young couple enjoying each others company on a boat on Crystal Lake, they accidentally run over a power cable which Jason is conveniently lying dead on. which ressurects him. He kills the couple on the boat and then…for some reason just…stays on the boat as it drifts out of Camp Crystal Lake and into what is clearly one of Camp Crystal Lakes MANY peninsula’s.

Its here we join a cruise liner heading out to Manhatten with a graduating class of ’89, chaperoned by a couple of teachers. Jason NOW decides to hop off the boat and hitches a ride on the side of the cruise liner…aaaand basically the rest of the plot is a mixture of ‘teen drama’ and Jason slowly picking off the grad’s for an hour…five minutes of the survivors bobbing along in the ocean, and 35 minutes of Jason literally getting into comedy hyjinks across Manhatten culminating in a very strange, campy but entertaining finale.

And while I think this is absolutely the worst way to end your 8 part long franchise, I cant deny that I find this thing SO enjoyable. Its campy, hammy. it gets pretty nasty in places and I really quite liked that they kept that supernatural element that began in part 6, but morphed it again into something a bit different, with Phantoms of Jason as a child appearing to try and warn the graduates that the real Jason was coming to cause trouble.

The script is of course terribly misleading, calling you film ‘Jason Takes Manhatten’ and then setting two of your three acts on a boat *HEADING* to Manhattan is a rather dirty trick on the part of the production. And it’s kind of a shame too because, while the boat stuff is fine…its ultimately a bit flat narrative wise, largely relying on the teen drama stuff to help carry the film for a big chunk of the runtime. Whereas, the second the action shifts to dry land in Manhatten, all this wonderful, colourful and eccentric character types come crawling out of the woodwork.

I almost wish they’d started the film with this kind of over the top tone and built from there, because what we’re left with is 2 acts that are just kind of ‘Okay’ in terms of their execution (FAR from the franchises best kills or plot developments) and an act thats total nonsensical fun.

The acts are a bit clunky with hard signalling for the changes which is a bit of a shame, the pacing is fairly pedestrian on the boat sections and then it suddenly gets 50k volts jolted up it for the Manhattan sequences. The films very self aware, which is a quality I actually really quite like about this entry in particular. It doesnt really care to try and play it cool. Its happy acknowledging that, by this point in the series Jasons been murdered 7 times over, turned into a zombie, drowned, electrocuted twice, hit in the head with an axe. It knows it’s ludicrous at this point, and it leans into it…to pretty solid effect i’d say.

The characters are a bit of a mixed bag, some of INCREDIBLY one note and dull, but these are also the characters most likely to be picked off, with the rest being actually kind of nuanced and subtle in giving them some complexities to work with.

I cant say I love the script for this one, but I can appreciate it as ‘a bit of a lark’ like I say, TERRIBLE ending to a franchise as successful as this, but as its own standalone entry (as it would go on to become) I think this is pretty much just the producers and paramount doing a bit of a goofy, self aware victory lap to celebrate 10 years of Jason.

The directions pretty solid. But it is a game of two halves, the boat sequences do feel a little on the drab side, Its aiming for low light mystery, especially on the segments below deck. but instead it just comes across as all very ‘one colour’, dark and uninteresting…I think they were trying to give ‘Freddys Boiler room’ vibes…but instead it just ends up looking like they didnt have enough lights to achieve what they wanted. I think they were aware that the boat scenes looked a little dull, because part way into the film, some scenes suddenly get ‘Suspiria’ style coloured lighting for NO reason at all!

By contrast, all the sequences in Manhattan are GORGEOUS. they’re grimey, dirty, nasty smokey neon lit goodness, they really capture a heavily styalized vibe and feel here thats PERFECT for this era of film making, They make the city look both beutiful and hideous in equal mesure and they they really work with colour (particularly around Jason) to help create something that hadnt been seen in any of the ‘Friday the 13th’ movies up to this point, it looks and feels distinct and it clearly had a very focussed vision in mind, which between the cast and crew, is realised pretty effectively.

The cine shines through too, as mentioned the use of coloured gels really helps give this thing a neon pop, but its the use of darkness contrasting these lighting choices that really helps give this film the stylistic contrast it needs to solidly define itself against the other entries. In a sea of entries consisting of. ‘greens, browns and beige’ this film is a neon soaked toxic green delight. Composition for the boat scenes are a little lacklustre, but they do have their moments, they do try to be creative on shot setups (with mixed results) and they do put the effort in.

But again, its the manhattan sequences that shine the brightest here, with several scenes getting very creative, experimentting with tracking shots, pans and angling to get the best they can out of making jason look menacing. They shot plenty of B-roll and it feels like all of it was VERY heavily considered, because the end result is an edit that moves along with a clip, but doesnt feel TOO snappy, and doesnt overstay its welcome.

If I was nitpicking? I’d maybe say at least 10-15 minutes of the boat footage could have been cut and that probably would have bumped this up another half star for me. It would address some of the pacing issues the boat sequences have, while also balancing the ‘Boat to Manhatten’ ratio out a little better AND it would help tighten up those first 2 acts, which do get a little bogged down in the ‘Teen Drama’ side of things.

Performance wise, I kinda got nothing, Peter Mark Richman as Charles is probably the strongest performer here, playing a somewhat malicious uncle to one of the graduates, he has a slimey quality that I feel oozes out wonderfully from him. But outside of him and Kane Hodder playing a blinder as Jason. There just…isnt much to say about the remaining cast members. Its one of the biggest porblems this franchise has, but it’s teen protagonists are often just…very one note and dull. They usually have some kind of gimmic (a fighter, a practical joker, a drug addict) and thats all there is. Im not saying they perform their roles badly, im just saying there isnt really all that much for them to do, but read their lines in a way that isnt dreadful, and pretty much kill time till they’re killed. its a shame really.

And the soundtrack! I think this is my favourite one of the whole series. If I had to pick one it’d certainly be a tossup between this and ‘Part 3’ thats for sure. it’s got that F13 quality, mashed up with some of THE hairiest Hair metal ballad and rock tracks i’ve ever heard. Cheesy as sin, its SUCH a fun little score an it INSTANTLY sets the tone and time this takes place (which is supposedly 1994 if you follow the timeline of the previous movies…ah well.)

I have a real soft spot for ‘Jason Takes Manhattan’ Its a film that doesnt take itself seriously, and while it does have MAJOR flaws…especially for a closing chapter. Its imperfections are kind of what draws me to it. It stands out, it looks and sounds great and it does something kind of interesting with its runtime, which other entries have only really flirted with.

I’d recommend ‘Jason Takes Manhattan’ But only after you’ve seen a couple of F13 movies and you know how the standards for these movies work. This is a subversive picture, and I think if you dont know how the F13 movies from 2-7 work…even in a vague sense…then a lot of what makes this one so fun will be lost in translation.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/friday-the-13th-part-viii-jason-takes-manhattan/