Day 6, and after the travisty that was Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, the series manages to redeem itself with one of the best movies of the entire series. Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI is one of (if not the, depending on your personal tastes) best movies of the franchise, primarily because it has its tongue wedged firmly in its cheek for the duration of the movie. It also brings Jason Voorhees back for real this time (abandoning the previous film's idea that Tommy Jarvis was going to take up the mantle by thinking he was Jason) and finally gives up on the idea that Jason is just a remarkably hard-to-kill woodsman by just straight up bringing him back as an undead killer (zombie or revenant?). When people think of Jason Voorhees now, this version of him is usually the one that first comes to mind.
After the events of A New Beginning, Tommy Jarvis is still a little unhinged and obsessed with the idea that Jason might not be dead, so he and a friend head out to dig Jason up and burn him, thus solving that problem. Unfortunately, lightning strikes Jason's body and brings him back (no occult or other explanations, just a lightning strike and that's that), and he promptly sets out on another killing spree at Camp Forest Green, the renamed Camp Crystal Lake (renamed to try to avoid the bad publicity). It's then up to Tommy to not only make people believe him when he says Jason is back, but also stop him once and for all (or until the next movie).
As I said at the start, Part VI has its tongue well and truly in its cheek here, and so its chock-full of black humour. From the opening credits which parody the James Bond opening where the silhouetted Bond shoots at the audience, to its occasional breaking of the 4th wall and addressing the audience directly, the film is determined to not take itself as seriously as its predecessors. This is a very good thing, especially after Part 5, because it not only helps the audience forget about the previous film's depths, but also brings something new to the table in the stalk-n-slash subgenre. After all, there is only so many ways you can show teens being butchered by a killer in a hockey mask, no matter how popular your franchise might be, and unless you keep things fresh your audience is going to start to drift away. Unfortunately, this new attitude might have come a little too late for the series, as Part VI was the first of the Friday the 13th movies to not break $20 million at the box office. Personally, I blame A New Beginning for that; memories of how bad that movie was were likely still fresh in people's minds and so they stayed away from Part VI for fear it was more of the same.
What's also good about Part VI is that it's a good stepping-on point for anyone who might be new to the Friday the 13th movies. Other than maybe needing to know why Tommy has such an obsession with Jason Voorhees (and they do explain that in the film), there's actually very little backstory you need to know to be able to get into the film. You've got an undead killer in a hockey mask and a lot of people for him to kill in imaginative ways, and that's really all you need to know. There's no need for the first five minutes or so of the movie to be taken up with the backstory of the previous five - you can just fall right into the killing.
Part VI is an energetic, fun film; its kills are creative and it concludes the Tommy Jarvis arc in a satisfactory way without resorting to "And now he's the killer! [spooky noise]" It's my personal favourite of the entire series. It's a breath of fresh air after Part 5, and I think that it's a terrible shame that it wasn't able to revitalise the series as much as it should have. From Part VI onward, the sequels started to make diminishing returns, both in profit and in quality, which is a great disappointment.
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