Friday the 13th Part III.

This review is in memory of my dog, Buster, who passed away on the 18/11/12. I miss you, brother.

Part III was released theatrically in 3-D back when that was a novelty the first time. This film and the two sequels that follow it, were each supposed to be the last film in the franchise. Once again it was a box office hit and a critical failure. Part III is widely considered the worst of the series and for good reason, allow me to explain over the next seven or so paragraphs.

Part III has the most original plot so far but it just doesn't feel like a Friday the 13th film any more. A bunch of clichéd character archetypes that are thinner than paper go to the woods to seemingly be as annoying as physically possible. Eventually they get in a fight with a biker gang or something, who are only there to be inconsistently written, add to Jason's body count and prolong the climax of the movie. And then Jason kills some people before finally getting his ass kicked for no adequately explained reason, it's just a rule that he has to suck in the third act of every movie, apparently. And then Pamela Vorhees is a zombie or something.

Also yes, in the final confrontation of the last film, Jason sucked pretty hard but throughout the rest of that film he worked the slasher gig methodically. He waited until people were on their own or strayed off to strike - this made sense. Here Jason spends most of the movie in a barn before eventually moving out of it at the end of the second act to kill a bunch of people for no adequately explained reason. I mean they at least bothered to put the whole vengeance idea in our minds in the last film, what is Jason's motivation now? And before you say that the flashback (I'll get to this) suggests he was always a 'slasher' then why hasn't he been aimlessly wandering around killing people his entire life? Is that because five years ago he was still a little kid in a lake and then he suddenly fully grew? I know this is just a slasher franchise but this is seriously fucking stupid. I mean he does start to show some of that methodical nature eventually, but it takes him about an hour to get into his groove and even then, he is still surprisingly rubbish considering the body count he has by now. What the fuck is this movie doing? Also - what is with this new immortality he has? Has he always been supernatural and the movies just weren't making a thing of it...or what? He survives a hanging, I mean I know magicians have devices and techniques to survive these things...but I'm pretty sure he didn't train to be a magician while in the woods. Also, doesn't this take place like a few days after the last film? Why is Jason completely healed? Why has his face completely changed? I knew the franchise eventually got pretty silly but I thought at this point he was just a deformed dude...what is he a Twilight werewolf now? Honestly, there are lots of things I don't really understand about Jason. Like I know it adds to the suspense, but why does he, in the context of the story, always hide the bodies and clean the crime scene? If his wilderness background is to be believed, who would have taught him this and why would he have thought this necessary? Where is he finding these cleaning products, how does he have the time? The never ending stupidity is the scariest part of the movie!

Our final girl is Chris Higgins, she is actually the most detailed of all the final girls so far, with an actual flashback, craziness! Some point in the past, she already clashed with Jason, after a fight with her parents. Miner and his screenwriters cleverly leave what Jason does to her - and whether it really happened at all, to your imagination, how sick can you get?

I can't really tell what is worse, watching this in 3D or watching the 2D because both versions look like utter shit. I stuck out with the 2D version in the end but everything looks awkwardly framed, grainy, blurry, really claustrophobic and the constant 3D money shots looks really unnatural. Fuck 3D it sucks in 2012 and it sucked in 1982 (although okay, Dredd 3D rocked).

Part III is by far the goofiest of the movies so far, this shift in tone is one of those make or break things and honestly I think the film rarely uses this for any kind of effect, so I guess that makes it a break. I mean sure, the goofiness is often amusing but if Miner got it right, balancing silliness with the utter seriousness of a stalking slasher could have played to great effect, instead the goofiness largely exists to pad the movie and undermine any scares the film could have had. In Part 2, a lot of nothing happened in that film but thanks to knowing a slasher was always out there, waiting to strike, it gave us a rising tension that had us hooked even when nothing was happening, a sense that something was coming. Part III can't build up any tension because it always deflates any it builds through how goofy it all is, meaning that yes, it can be quite amusing but that still doesn't change the fact that nothing is fucking happening. I didn't realise any of the films could waste our time more than the first one did. Seriously, I cannot stress this enough, Part III is abysmally paced. The film doesn't really properly start until about an hour in. This is fucking pathetic. And yes, when it finally starts and starts to actually feel like a Friday the 13th movie, the quality and the scares ramp up almost as drastically as the stupidity does. The last half an hour of this film is fantastic. But after sitting through a whole hour of nothing, a solid closing half an hour doesn't feel like a worthy reward, I mean sure the first film did something similar but that doesn't mean you go and do that bullshit again.

In the films defence, when the killing does finally fucking start, the special effects certainly are better than the other movies but that is unsurprising since the budget of this film was more than double the last, which was more than double of the first. This is also Friday the 13th at its most gory and imaginatively violent with deaths including a speargun to the face, electrocution, a guy getting his head popped like a balloon and a hot poker skewering.

Also I would admit, the fact that Part III keeps taking obvious moments for the slasher to strike...and then not having the slasher strike does give us a sense that we really don't know what will happen next or more specifically, who will die next. In the first two films you could pretty much tell me the order people would die from an introduction to the characters...here it isn't so simple.

So do I recommend it? Much like with the second part, Part III largely leaves me frustrated and unlike the second part, that is all this film leaves me. Although it raises more questions than it answers, intertwining final girl Chris with Jason in her past was a clever move that gave her more weight than the other paper thin final girls of the last two movies. Part III also has some of the most imaginative and gory deaths of the series so far however the rest of the film is utter boredom mixed with a massive helping of stupid. It does nothing to expand the Friday the 13th Universe, it does nothing to scare you, hell that first hour doesn't even really feel like the same movie or a Friday the 13th film at all. Apart from a few pointless and largely unimaginative kills, Jason spends the first hour lurking in a barn...and that is it. The first movie already did the 'shit first hour, solid final half an hour' thing and at least that had some scares and interesting ideas leading up to its climax, hell you may as well just YouTube the deaths from this movie and watch Part II again, since that was basically a better version of the first film. Part III is not the worst film I've ever seen in my life but the final act really shows everything this movie could have been and that is why I'm frustrated, in those final thirty or so minutes there is a glimpse there could have been a good movie here, so what the fuck happened Miner? How did you direct both Part 2 and this...

Think About It!

-Locke