The Big Picture
- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is considered the best installment, showcasing everything that makes '80s slashers great, from the setting to the music to the kills.
- Tommy Jarvis, the final boy in The Final Chapter, is a unique and believable character who ultimately defeats Jason Voorhees using his knowledge and special skills.
- The Final Chapter provides a satisfying and definitive ending for Jason Voorhees in his human form, with an intense final battle that is both terrifying and rewarding.
Though a lawsuit means we haven't seen a Friday the 13th film since 2009's reboot, the franchise is still iconic, with its masked killer, Jason Voorhees, on par with Michael Myers and Halloween. From the good to the bad to the silly, Friday the 13th has given horror fans many memorable moments, whether it be for a gory kill scene, a scary Jason moment, or a shocking finale.
Even if the franchise began to lose its way when New Line Cinema took control, leading to that bonkers, very un-Friday feeling in Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday in 1993, those first eight films put out in ten years by Paramount, for all their successes and flaws, is when Friday the 13th was at its peak. You can pick and choose your favorite parts from movies here and there, but one of them, 1984's The Final Chapter, gave us a gory kill, a frightening Jason, and a jaw-dropping finale all in one five-minute span. While it wasn't the finale for the franchise, the ending of this film is everything that's great about '80s slashers.
'Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter' Is Regarded as the Best in the Franchise
Some dismiss the Friday the 13th franchise as a clone of Halloween, but from the beginning, it's something different. That first film took place not in suburbia, but at a summer camp. There was no masked killer, but rather a mystery. We didn't know who the killer was, and then when it was revealed to be an older woman named Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), we were completely shocked.
In the sequel, we get our first glimpse of Pamela's son Jason, a hillbilly in coveralls wearing a sack over his head. In the third film, the hockey mask was introduced. Though Jason looks different in those films, the plots are similar: Jason stalks horny teenagers at a camp, gets in some sick kills, and then the final girl takes him down, though not finishing the job. Jumping forward to the fifth film, A New Beginning, we'd have the dissatisfaction of a copycat killer, and then in parts 6-8, Jason as a zombie. While still fun to watch, he began to get dangerously close to becoming a parody of himself.
In between was The Final Chapter, coming out in 1984. It was not only the peak of the slasher subgenre, before it would become something watered down and played out, but it was also the peak of Friday the 13th itself. Everything was on point, from the setting and the characters to the music and the kills. And then there was Jason himself. In Part 3, Richard Brooker played him as a lumbering man, his head cocked to one side, his arm dangling. He felt deformed. Later in the franchise, when Kane Hodder took over, Jason became a heavy-breathing, unstoppable hulk, that, while effective, was just like so many other masked killers. In The Final Chapter, Jason is played by Ted White. He's still human here, but no longer with physical limitations. He stands up straight, he runs fast, he's smart, but he's not yet an impenetrable beast. He's a man still, but a very angry and skilled one, and it's absolutely terrifying. This is Jason at his best. Every portrayal after was an attempt to replicate it.
Tommy Jarvis Is a Final Boy Unlike Anything We'd Seen Before
The Friday the 13th franchise, like most slashers, is known for its final girl. There have been some good ones. The first three were all written well, not just as shy virginal stereotypes, but well thought out characters. The best of them was Friday the 13th Part 2's Ginny (Amy Steel), a smart young woman who is studying psychology. She's fascinated by Jason Voorhees, wondering why he is the way he is, and she uses that knowledge to defeat him not just with brawn but brains too, tricking him, in the end, to make him believe that she is his mother.
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The films have done the final boy here and there, the boyfriend of the final girl there to help her out because God forbid she be able to do it on her own! The Final Chapter does that too, giving us a final girl in Trish (Kimberly Beck), but her final boy is not a manly love interest, but an actual boy in her twelve-year-old little brother, Tommy (Corey Feldman). That's not something you'll see much of, the foe of a killer being a child, and a believable one at that. Tommy feels like special effects wizard Tom Savini come to life on the screen, a weird kid obsessed with making monster masks and gory makeup. Just as Ginny had been fascinated by Jason, so is Tommy, due to his love of monsters. That knowledge, along with his special set of skills, will finally lead to Jason's demise.
'The Final Chapter' Kills off the Human Version of Jason Voorhees
It's easy to laugh at a Friday the 13th movie with "final chapter" in the title. There would only be eight more movies in the franchise after this "final" one, yet this truly was meant to be the end — and in a way, it was. This is the end of Jason in his living human form. The Final Chapter gives us a satisfying ending by going for that, despite what would come later. After the certainty of the ending in the original Friday the 13th, with final girl Alice (Adrienne King) cutting off Mrs. Voorhees' head, leaving her very much dead, the second and third films were lazy in their finales. We were dealing with a franchise here. We couldn't have Jason die. As great of a final girl as Ginny was in that second movie, she was also weak in finishing the job, hitting Jason in the shoulder with a machete and thinking that would somehow kill him. Part 3's final girl, Chris (Dana Kimmel), does better, first hanging Jason, then hitting him in the head with the machete rather than the shoulder. She doesn't go for the double tap, however, so it's no surprise when Jason wakes up in the morgue in The Final Chapter.
The Final Chapter's ending goes for broke. We have Jason at his scariest, bursting through a door on a dark and stormy night where Tommy and his sister, Trish, are the only ones left. Their mother is dead. Trish's beau and all of her friends are dead. It's just her and a little kid. Tommy thinks of a way to fight back. He runs upstairs, and looking at a newspaper drawing of a young Jason, begins to transform himself into the murderer as a boy, shaving his head, and leaving patches of hair here and there so that he looks like that boy who drowned in Camp Crystal Lake all those years ago.
Yes, it's a little silly that he's doing this, and how fast he does it, leaving his sister to fight Jason downstairs alone, but she's a formidable final girl, slicing Jason's hand in half with a machete. Just as Jason has her, however, Tommy appears at the bottom of the steps, shouting the killer's name. Voorhees turns, confused to see himself, just as he had been confused to see his mother in Part 2. Tommy urges Jason to remember who he is and what happened to him. With the killer almost in a trance, Trish swings the machete, knocking the mask from Jason's grotesque face.
'Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter' Gave Us a Satisfying Ending
Then comes the end of Jason, one which isn't cheap or left open for a return (a futile gesture, but still). Tommy now takes the machete and doesn't aim for the shoulder of a hardened skull but right for Jason's face. The blade plunges deep, and as Jason falls to his knees, it slices his brain in half. There's no coming back from that, except this is a slasher, so when the dead killer's finger twitches, Tommy takes the machete and sends it crashing down into Jason's flesh repeatedly, all while screaming, "Die! Die!"
Just a year later, Friday the 13th would be back, and two years later, in Jason Lives, Voorhees himself would return as a zombie-like creature brought back from the dead by a bolt of lightning. Tommy Jarvis would be in both of these films, though played by different actors. The franchise now had its archenemy for its villain, it's Laurie Strode to Michael Myers. It all started here, where a satisfying movie with a killer in his most terrifying incarnation met the ultimate final hero in a battle that kept its promise. It aimed to please fans and not treat us like idiots, giving us what we wanted from a Friday the 13th movie but in a way we weren't expecting. The Final Chapter might not be the final one, but it's the best chapter. A smart, rewarding ending makes that possible.
