Login'Friday the 13th' may have been panned by critics when first released but since then it is one of the most famous and influential horror films, the franchise containing one of horror's most iconic villains. The film is popular enough to become a franchise and spawn several sequels of varying quality and generally inferior to the one that started it all of.
The fifth film in the series 'A New Beginning' is the most maligned 'Friday the 13th' film by critics and fans, although it has garnered a cult following and its fair share of defence over time. To me, 'A New Beginning' is better than its reputation and that it tries to do something different is laudable. Also do not think it's the worst 'Friday the 13th' film. Having said that, the disappointment is understandable. There are good merits here, but it also did fall short to me.
Starting with 'A New Beginning's' strengths, the best things about it are the as ever haunting music score and the terrific performance, both disturbing and moving, of John Shepherd. There are a few darkly funny moments, a few creepy ones and some of the death scenes are creative.
The nightmare sequences are stylish and as nightmarish as one would hope. It's a pretty decent looking film, not cinematic art (but in all honesty that can never be expected from a 'Friday the 13th' film) but not amateurish.
However, there are things that work against 'A New Beginning'. From my understanding, It is not that the film is different in the lack of Jason (this didn't bother me at all and is an insignificant issue), the more tongue-in-cheek tone and the idea it tried to introduce that irked fans, but the generally misguided way it was executed.
More problematic are the problems as a standalone. The acting is not good (Shepherd is the sole exception), Melanie Kinnaman being awful, and the clumsy and far too simple dialogue, that slips more into vulgar camp than darkly tongue-and-cheek, and the mostly annoying and dull stereotypes passing for characters fare worse (the only one to be interesting and get proper development is Tommy).
'A New Beginning' has the highest body count, and while there are some creative and unsettling deaths (others less so, hurt by gratuity and predictability) it was almost as if there were too many death scenes that gives one not that much time to compose themselves after each one. There is not enough suspense, the creepiness is too far and between and the story is thin and very hackneyed, with one of the series' silliest endings. The mystery elements don't work, being far too obvious, and neither does the identity of the killer, the killings committed by somebody that is not in it much in their real guise and doesn't have much presence.
In summation, not that bad and not deserving of its black sheep reputation but a long way from being great. 5/10 Bethany Cox
A new beginning?
Posted : 1 year, 9 months ago on 16 July 2022 09:28
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There's A Man With No Life In His Eyes..
Posted : 14 years, 9 months ago on 2 August 2009 04:21
Fucking awesome chapter! Directed by Danny Steinmann, who is responible for directing such films as The Unseen and Savage Streets. Very well put together and going slightly astray from the masked killer himself. (you'll see at the end of the flick) After a young man is hacked to death by his peer (Return of The Living Dead's Suicide), bodies start to disappear; only to be found carved up and mutilated by what remaining survivors say they saw as Jason Voorhees himself! The stage is set at a halfway house full of not only bad kids in need of reform, but Tommy Jarvis himself! Overall fun movie, as they all are; and a few months ago I got to witness Danny himself do commentary while the film was being projected on a big screen at Cinema Wasteland in Ohio. "Spider" Miguel Nunez Jr. is also in this film, as the man with a plan in a van. Can't wait for the Friday the 13th Part 5 reunion in NJ this August! Whiel watching the movie, I kept asking myself, "Hey, why is that crack on the top corner of his mask gone?", what a great twist.
Ethel Hubbard: That is one fucking ugly man that goes there.
Junior Hubbard: That's one fucking ugly man, Mama.
Ethel Hubbard: Would you shut your trap? You ain't so pretty yourself, you know.
Junior Hubbard: I ain't so pretty myself, I know.
Ethel Hubbard: That is one fucking ugly man that goes there.
Junior Hubbard: That's one fucking ugly man, Mama.
Ethel Hubbard: Would you shut your trap? You ain't so pretty yourself, you know.
Junior Hubbard: I ain't so pretty myself, I know.
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