With Jason dead and buried (and, shockingly, remaining that way) the series shifts its focus to a Pennsylvania halfway house. Here, a dozen years in the future, we find Tommy Jarvis: young survivor of the last Vorhees killing spree, now fully grown and grappling with mental illness.
The intention must have been to freshen the stagnant franchise, but that effort goes no further than a change in location and the mysterious identity of a new hockey-masked killer. We're still stuck with the same basic plot, and though the frequency of kills has gone through the roof, the level of originality has not. Almost every method can be traced to an earlier picture (where it was undoubtedly performed with more finesse) and, most times, there's no rhyme or reason behind the means of execution. Perhaps the bloodiest work came in the editing room, as an X-rated early cut led to countless deletions: the resulting quick-cut camerawork often makes it tough to surmise what's going on and ruins the pacing of many scenes.
It's saddled with a flood of pointlessly one-dimensional characters, fuel for the bloody fire, who come and go like shoppers at a Black Friday sale with nary a whiff of development. The soundtrack reaches new lows, impressive given how inept earlier entries were in that department. And perhaps most damning, an awful bait-and-switch fakeout spoils the climax. Pathetic filmmaking, through and through. Is it any surprise the director/screenwriter never worked again?
Review by VicenteBlockedParentSpoilers2020-04-24T17:37:42Z
This movie is pretty bad in most aspects. Actually, in all of them.
The characters are not interesting, like at all. Reggie and his brother are the ones that show a little life inside them.
For some mysterious reason almost every character in this film sings some annoying song in random moments. Oh god, please stop, we’re not in a musical.
Deaths are uninspired, generic and not creative. Most of that is due that they do not want to show the killer’s face, they could’ve done a better job for sure though.
The story is weak. It has a plot twist that apparently makes the killer’s identity one character that appears for 5 seconds and you’ll possibly have two thoughts: “yeah, I knew this was the one, that 5 second look gave it all” or you’ll end up like “who the hell is this guy?”.
Or maybe it was Tommy that did all the killings and that ambulance guy only killed the people in the final act of the film. You know that it’s not really Jason there butchering everyone. Whatever, I suppose it’s not worthy to think too much about this movie anyway.
“Jason” visual is not good. I don’t know, it feels weird, maybe it’s because the new mask being blue and fitting strangely in the actor's head.
So as you can imagine the film is super boring, lame and meaningless. A New Beginning is probably the weakest of the franchise, or not. Let’s see what other nightmares are ahead, I don’t think I’m ready for it.