Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (October 8, 2004)
Since they called the fourth flick in the Friday the 13th series The Final Chapter, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning shouldn’t exist. But I guess they decided money remained to be made, so the series continues with this 1985 flick.
In a departure from the first three sequels, Beginning doesn’t open with a rehash of the prior flicks. It quickly reintroduces the character of Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), the kid who finished off Jason in Final Chapter. He watches some goons dig up Jason’s grave, an action that revives the killer and sends the madman after the boy. However, Tommy soon wakes up from this vision to reveal that he’s now a young adult (John Shepherd) in the care of a mental hospital.
Yes, it appears that little Tommy went a bit bonkers after his encounter with Jason, so now the extremely withdrawn dude remains a charge of the public mental health system. They send him to the rustic Pinehurst Youth Development Center, where he quickly meets assistant director Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman) and director Matthew Letter (Richard Young). They brief him on the center’s system and what they hope to do for him.
From there Tommy settles in and we meet the other residents as they go about their chores. One of them turns out to be a little nuttier than the rest; Vic Faden (Mark Venturini) goes psycho when he angrily takes an axe to fat, dopey resident Joey (Dominick Brascia). The cops cart off Vic, but we soon see that another murderer stalks the area when a mystery man violently slays a pair of young toughs.
The kids and staff remain on edge after this, and it doesn’t contribute to Tommy’s already precarious mental state. He continues to see visions of Jason, and he reacts violently when another kid taunts him. In the meantime, more slayings occur outside of the facility. Sheriff Tucker (Marco St. John) tries to handle the killing spree while he undergoes pressures from the mayor (Ric Mancini). Tucker proposes an outrageous theory when he suspects Jason as the murderer even though Mr. Voorhees apparently was cremated.
From there, we watch as the death toll escalates. The mystery killer continues his rampage. As always, this leads toward an inevitable confrontation of some sort.
No one will accuse New Beginning of deviating radically from the template established in the first four movies, but I’ll give it some credit for its attempts to broaden matters. Much of the set-up and execution remains the same. The plot offers another batch of youngsters isolated in the middle of the woods, and we see a series of gruesome killings.
At least Beginning tries to do something different, though. Yeah, it follows the same basic structure, but it offers some intrigue as to the identity of the killer. Other flicks attempted red herrings, but this one pulls off those teasers.
Tommy doesn’t get a lot of depth, but he stands as one of the series’ more interesting characters. The rest of them vary from non-entity to broad stereotype. The movie doesn’t attempt to delve into Tommy’s psychoses well, but it gives him some personality, and that’s more than I can say for many folks in the prior four movies.
Overall, I prefer New Beginning among the first five Friday movies. Will it stay my favorite after I watch the next three? That I don’t know, and to call it the best of the bunch seems like faint praise anyway, as none of the prior four did a lot for me. Beginning doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it shows some creativity and turns into a reasonably satisfying slasher flick.
