Surprisingly good. I know everyone hates this one, but I guess the previous film was so bad that I managed to enjoy Jason Goes to Hell. I was really afraid after the experience of Jason Takes Manhattan, but this one overcame my expectations — that were super low — but anyway, a fun movie.

Jason is dead in the ending of the last film? Yes, but he is in every other movie of the franchise too, so that didn’t bother me. With that said the opening sequence is cool! It subverts our expectations and presents something new, Jason is really “killed”. Well, at least his body is destroyed.

Bringing the idea of Jason never really dying, but passing on his soul, his evil essence to some other receptacle seem it the next right move to the franchise.

Although the argument of the script is good, I don’t think it was well developed. Some things happen just for some random reason and we get no explanation whatsoever.

Creighton Duke, the bounty hunter, mysteriously knows everything about Jason’s origin, his family and how to kill him. Jason having a sister is something that doesn’t make much sense, but I can live with. She's a bit annoying and in the scenes of combat she is stupid.

I kind of liked the score and how Jason's look is in this one, really gory.

One aspect I really enjoyed about Jason Goes To Hell is its pacing. This is one of the best in the series to do this: I didn’t “feel” the movie hours passing through. I just started watching and then realised the movie was about to end. Well done.

Cool ending with Freddy taking Jason’s mask hinting the plans for a crossover.

During the 1980s, only two years passed without an entry in the Friday the 13th series. That's eight films in ten years, and while the quality usually betrayed those short production times, they always felt like kin. Spiritual relatives. It took four years for a ninth chapter to see the light of day, plus a switch from Paramount to New Line Cinema, and somewhere along the way there was a great disconnect.

A true B-grade picture in every sense, Jason Goes to Hell is the worst Friday yet, and one of the most desperate, flailing, pointless films I've ever seen. Though veteran blade-swinger Kane Hodder has returned to the role, this Jason bears little resemblance to the cool, creepy psycho killer of the earlier films. Inflated and deformed, at this point he's basically a roid-raging leper in a twisted, vaguely-familiar hockey mask, but he's changed in more than just a physical sense.

The story revolves around his black heart, literally migrating from host to host to inspire fresh killings after Jason himself is blown to bits in the opening scene. We've swallowed some absurdly stupid plot devices over the course of this franchise, including a similarly lame-brained "fake Jason" angle in 1985's A New Beginning, but this one sets an awful new standard. It plays like cruddy straight-to-video '90s gimmick horror, not the quaintly under-produced slasher material that had typified the series to this point.

Needless to say, the acting hasn't improved (somehow, impossibly, it's actually grown much worse) and the production values, which enjoyed a well-deserved bump in Jason Takes Manhattan, are once again cut-rate and pitiful. Not a good look for New Line, proving right out of the gates that they don't understand what they're making and don't honestly care, one way or the other.

Decent watch, might watch again, but can't recommend outside a Bad Movie Night or a Friday the 13th Marathon.

It's both refreshing and sad to see them try to re-invent Jason. As a fan of "Fallen" I like the idea of the villain transferring from person to person, but they twist the concept a bit more than I would have wanted at points.

Adding a "chosen one" trope to this doesn't do much for me. Having a nearly unkillable villain alone should be intriguing enough, adding extra rules to it doesn't feel good.

I'd like to see a Marvel style reboot where the government has to try to contain the heart, and they figure out the minimum safe distance, creating a facility around it with animals going nuts, and someone breaks in to find out what it is and is possessed.

It's not a great movie, and it's probably a bad "Friday the 13th" movie, but I enjoyed it for what it is.

***Great intro & first act, but kinda distasteful and convoluted with a cartoony last act***

Released in 1993, "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday," aka Part IX, is the oddest entry in the series, along with the next one. But this isn't much of a surprise since three of the previous four installments were departures from the typical Friday formula -- Part V, VII (which features a Carrie-like character) and especially VIII (which switches the setting from Crystal Lake to a cruise ship and the big city).

The prologue shows Jason back at Crystal Lake. How'd he get back there after the events in Part VIII? The ending of that movie didn't show Jason completely destroyed, so we must assume that he made it out of the sewers of Manhattan and simply gravitated back to his familiar stomping grounds, which is only about 75 miles away. Anyway, the opening is excellent and highlighted by the most stunning female in the entire series, Julie Michaels as Agent Marcus (which is saying a lot in light of the series having the best line of women of ANY movie franchise).

Jason’s corpse winds up in the morgue in Youngstown, Ohio, and the film takes an interesting twist reminiscent of the 80's cult film "The Hidden." Other bizarre additions to the Jason Voohees mythos include a magic blade, a strange "Jason-Finder General" character and the disclosure of the only way the infernal monster can be killed and resurrected. I don't mind these revelations as the series was hackneyed after 8 films in 10 years from 1980-89, albeit still entertaining. Besides, there are enough typical Friday-isms to please fans of the series, for instance the entire camp sequence and the prologue, not to mention the return of an iconic character in the finale.

Some fans object to the main revelation on the grounds that Jason is supposedly a misunderstood man-child and this movie changes that. Actually the only films fitting this model are Parts II, XI and the 2009 remake. Parts I, V, VI, VII, and VIII were more in line with the idea of Jason as a force of darkness & evil, the curse on Crystal Lake or whatever. And Parts III and IV had him killing a pregnant girl, psychologically torturing the heroine, and attempting to kill a boy after slaying his mother, so he wasn't exactly Lenny from "Of Mice and Men" as these critics maintain. Face it, although Jason may have been an innocent deformed child at one time, the seed of evil (possibly a demonic spirit) entered into his heart at some point and he increasingly became a hideous hellish monster and you have to give this entry credit for trying to fill in the bones with corpse flesh, whether you accept these surprises or not.

Unfortunately, there’s a distasteful element to the proceedings, which is offset by the black humor a bit, and the final act goes so over-the-top with the action and horror shenanigans that the movie becomes cartoonish and laughable. A good example is the campy fight between the deputy and Steven. As such, "Jason Goes to Hell" is one of my least favorite in the series, along with Parts III and VII. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining enough and gets extra points for trying something fresh and interesting.

Besides the awe-inspiring Agent Marcus in the prologue, we get a couple of cute campers, Deborah and Alexis, with Deborah (Michelle Clunie) particularly shining. There's also Jessica, who turns out to be the main protagonist, her mom (the goddess Erin Gray from "Buck Rogers") and Vicki from the restaurant. Needless to say, great job on the female front, but they coulda done more with Jessica.

For those who care (I don't) this entry seriously ups the ante in the horrific gore factor.

As far as locations go, this installment goes back to Southern California in the tradition of Parts III, IV and V; specifically the Los Angeles area: West Hills and Thousand Oaks.

BOTTOM LINE: "Jason Goes to Hell" gets props for its radical departure from the Friday formula, even while containing “Friday” staples: youths, babes, Crystal Lake, slayings and so on. But there’s a disagreeable air despite the amusement and the final act spins out of control with quasi-horror zaniness. Still, any movie that features Agent Marcus and Deborah can't be all bad.

The film runs 87 minutes (rated) and 90 minutes (unrated).

GRADE: C+/B-

The second film touted to be the "Final" _Friday the 13th_ movie, and the second one to lie.

Being honest, right out of the gate, I don't particularly like _Jason Goes to Hell_, and not only because of the negative sense-memory I have after playing a drinking game to it with straight Jack Daniels. But at least it tried some different things. Different tone, different look, different direction, different... Production company? It's still really not good, but it does sort of break up the marathon a bit by being something that no other _Friday the 13th_ quite is.

_Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product._