Director: Adam Marcus
Year: 1993
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Friday the 13th Part 9; Friday the 13th Part IX: The Dark Heart of Jason Voorhees
Genre: Supernatural Slasher
Plot:
Presumed dead after an FBI raid, the locals' attempt to move on is affected by Jason Voorhees' return by body-hopping through the various people in town, trying to kill off his relatives to ensure his rebirth and forcing them to fend him off to send him back to Hell for good.
Review:
This one was one of the most underrated and utterly enjoyable entries in the series. What really works here for this one is the rather fun and enjoyable twist this makes for the series by finding something new and original to do in the series, offering up the possibility of Jason not being merely a deformed human being but rather an entity that can inhabit bodies and become possessed at will. This idea of body-hopping and getting to host himself in others to continue his rampage makes for some truly original and creative times in here while also making for a great fact of building some solid suspense, wondering who's the one to become Jason and continue his rampage.
There's even some fine rules and regulations this utilizes here to set that factor in motion which are even better, coming across with a sense of intelligent thought required to pull these thread together tying in Jason's legacy and family heritage that must be utilized here to fully bring the legend to reality makes this quite enjoyable and far more chilling than expected. Beyond this, the film scores so well with the inclusion of some utterly insane action scenes that keep this one going forward at an utterly frantic pace, starting with the opening raid the features the fine camp-stalking here that brings about the massive gunfire-filled trap here that's utterly over-the-top action, the big brawls at the house with the possessed bodies leading to a fine battle in several great encounters, a great attack on campers hiking in the woods with some utterly graphic deaths and the big attacks in the police station.
These are fun here with the great battles here proving the invulnerability of Jason at that time and taking out the police force in grand style which leads through the streets into the diner attack which has more gore, gunfire attempting to stop him, tons of action shooting through the different work-stations and has plenty of thrilling stalking throughout here which makes this so much fun as a whole. Likewise, the finale is highly impressive with the big resurrection having a profound effect, showing the demon crawling into the body, leaving the big resurrection, and then bringing along the utterly fantastic one-on-one brawl that brings about the great finale that's all kinds of fun, which ends this on a high note.
Combined with the fine nudity and great gory kills, these all give this enough to like over the film's one lone flaw. The main thing here is that with Jason so left out of the film, this one spends a ton of time on exposition and general information about the storyline that not only is there quite a dearth of true Jason action, but so many of the actual rules here don't really make sense at all. The tales of demonic prophecies foretelling familial relations at the heart of ending his reign really make no sense throughout here. This issue really lowers this one somewhat, but not enough with all the other positives.
Overview: ****.5/5
One of the best entries in the series, this one has far more to like about it as long as its conventions and connotations are taken into account as there's plenty to overcome these personal preference issues. Viewers with an open appreciation for what it's attempting to accomplish, are generally curious about the franchise's shift in perspective, or devotees and fanatics of the character will have the most to like here, while the more traditional-minded of what's being attempted should heed extreme caution, if not outright avoid.
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