Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Jason Voorhees is accidentally awakened from his watery grave and ends up stalking a ship full of graduating high-school students headed to Manhattan, New York.
Jacob O’Neal reviewedJune 14, 2025
This movie is a bit of an oddball. The producers were concerned that the series was getting stale as the box office had been dipping since part 5. They needed something fresh for the franchise. So Jason went to New York…well, Canada mostly, but they did shoot briefly in Times Square. That shot of Jason standing there was awesome. But mostly we have scenes of Jason terrorizing high schoolers and their teacher on a boat trip to New York that somehow started from Crystal Lake. But they’re fighting a supernatural killer who can punch a man so hard his head will fly off so I guess I can suspend disbelief.
Originally written with a higher budget in mind and more shooting time in New York, the movie centered around a group of high school seniors on a class trip to New York for school. Being late 80’s you can see the shift in characterizations from where we were in 1980 with the first one. Now we have the meek final girl who is afraid of water on a boat trip. Her trial intensity is increased by being forced to overcome her greatest fear to triumph over the evil of Jason. You have the MTV obsession of the late 80’s showing itself in the leather jacket wearing, guitar playing girl with an attitude. There’s the nerdy guy with the video camera trying to document everything he sees. There’s the immoral girl he loves. But he shouldn’t since she is attempting to blackmail her teacher while the kid who loves her records the scene from his hiding spot. The tone of the characters really seemed to shift with this one. It wasn’t meta, but it switched from having the characters be either horny jerks and horny sweethearts to something a little less pure, for lack of a better word.
There were a lot of fun moments in Jason Takes Manhattan. The kill in the bathroom was better than expected given the cramped space. The boat’s disco room scene was fun. The pace of the movie was fast and never really dull. Sure, the movie is a cheesy mess. It’s cliched. It’s poorly acted by most. And Kelly Hu (X2, The Scorpion King) had that big 80’s hair. This is not my favorite movie in the series. It’s still fun. I appreciate it for what it tried to do. It was also the first time Ken Kirzinger played Jason for a shot of being thrown out a window. 15 years later he replaced Kane Hodder in Freddy Vs. Jason.
Coming up next time - Jason is sidelined but the Necromicon gives us his spirt.