‘Facing your fear doesn’t always conquer it...’
Jason Vorhees rampaging around New York City. It’s a fantastic concept. Eight films into any franchise is a tough time for creatives and the prospect of another cabin-in-the-woods movie would have been unthinkable at this point. So, writer-director Rob Hedden penned an ambitious script that saw Jason popping up at Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building and Times Square. Ultimately, only the latter location was used due to budgetary constraints leaving the title of the film as a bit of a misnomer. Jason Briefly Visits Manhattan After an Excruciatingly Long Cruise Ship Journey would perhaps have been more apt…
Jason (Kane Hodder) follows a bunch of teenagers from Crystal Lake to New York City on a cruise ship. It’s not clear why he does this or even how a huge cruise ship manages to join the ocean from what has always appeared to be a self-contained fairly small lake. Not to worry. The bigger mystery here is why on earth Hedden believed that this film should be over 100 minutes long.
Eight movies in. How did this simple little Halloween rip-off get to this point? It’s difficult to say. Well, it was the ’80s for the start. The fact that two of the characters in the film are seen snorting cocaine is a clue as to what was driving some of the creative decisions here. At one point, one of the many interchangeable forgettable characters takes a guitar and an amp below deck and just starts wailing on it. Jason, who presumably hates music of all kinds, soon puts a stop to it. Later, he punches a guy’s head off. Just punches it clean off. This is the kind of movie we are dealing with.
All that being said, and I know many people will find this next comment preposterous, but I largely enjoyed revisiting Jason Takes Manhattan. Sure, it’s badly acted and absurdly written and was disowned by both the director and crew, but it’s also a lot of fun in a franchise that can often be samey and repetitive. If you don’t like horror movies then for god’s sake, don’t watch this one. For Jason devotees, however, this entry is well worth seeking out.