Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is a 1993 American supernatural slasher film directed by Adam Marcus from a screenplay by Dean Lorey and Jay Huguely, based on a story by Huguely and Marcus. The ninth installment in the Friday the 13th franchise, as well as the first installment in the franchise to be released by New Line Cinema, it stars John D. LeMay, Kari Keegan, Erin Gray, Allison Smith, Steven Culp, Steven Williams, and Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees, reprising his role from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989). The film follows the ghost of Jason possessing people in order to continue his killings after his death. To resurrect himself, Jason must possess a member of his bloodline, but he can also be permanently killed by one of his family members using a magic dagger.

The film was conceived by co-writer and director Marcus under Sean S. Cunningham, producer and director of the first film. After the low box-office returns of Jason Takes Manhattan, Paramount Pictures sold the character rights of Jason Voorhees to New Line Cinema.

Jason Goes to Hell was theatrically released on August 13, 1993, and grossed $15.9 million at the box office on a budget of $3 million, becoming the second-lowest performing film in the series, after Jason Takes Manhattan. The film was lambasted by critics and fans, criticizing the supernatural elements and lack of Jason Voorhees as a physical character. Paramount Pictures, who had released the previous eight Friday the 13th films, negotiated with New Line Cinema over the rights to the series, and ultimately granted New Line Cinema rights to the Jason Voorhees character, but forgot to give them the Friday the 13th title. New Line Cinema placed Cunningham's idea for a Freddy-versus-Jason film on hold, prompting him to generate a different script to precede that plot line. Cunningham's original idea would later manifest as Freddy vs. Jason in 2003. Cunningham has denied ever telling Marcus to "find a way to get rid of that fucking mask", however, Marcus rebukes Cunningham's claim and insists that he did not have that level of creative control. Cunningham had also demanded that the events of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan be ignored. The filmmaker's initial pitch saw Elias Voorhees, Jason's father, digging up his body at the beginning of the film, eating his heart, taking on his supernatural powers and embarking on a similar killing spree. Jay Huguely was hired to flesh out Marcus' ideas into a script. According to Marcus, he had originally written the character of Steven Freeman to be Tommy Jarvis from part 4–6, but New Line Cinema only owned the rights to Jason and not Tommy and so could not legally use that character at the time. Marcus also explains that New Line Cinema did not own the Friday the 13th title, explaining why the film titles after Jason Takes Manhattan did not include the franchise name up until the 2009 remake.

Huguely's draft was reportedly "[...] a hodgepodge of a script" and "unintelligible". Cunningham hired Dean Lorey to scrap Huguely's work and write a completely new script within four days, removing Elias Voorhees from the story as Lorey felt that Jason must be the central character. Lorey's initial idea for the film saw Jason caught in between a gang war in Los Angeles, but an impending production start immediately shot down the writer's pitch. Michael De Luca of New Line disliked Lorey's rewrite but greenlit the film regardless. Lorey moved onto another project, prompting the studio to turn to Leslie Bohem, who provided a polish to the script over a weekend. Lewis Abernathy of House IV: The Repossession was enlisted for further rewrites for the opening sequence.

The film marked Adam Marcus' debut film; having graduated from film school, Marcus was originally attached to direct My Boyfriend's Back for Touchstone Pictures, but the studio's parent company, Walt Disney Studios, did not want to hire a first-time director, and Marcus was dropped from the project. Marcus, who was a lifelong fan of the Friday the 13th series, developed a story in which Voorhees is destroyed at the beginning of the narrative, only to manifest in the bodies of other people and continue his rampage. Marcus would later acknowledge the concept's similarity to that of The Hidden, though he stated he had not seen the film at that time, and that the similarity was coincidental.

Casting

Tony Todd auditioned for the role of Creighton Duke, which went to Steven Williams. Laurie Holden was Adam Marcus' and Dean Lorey's choice for the role of Jessica Kimble, but Sean Cunningham overruled them and pushed for Kari Keegan instead. Cunningham had asked for the film to be shot at twenty two frames per second as opposed to twenty four. Marcus claims he clashed with Cunningham following a dispute over creative decision near the end of filming. A shower scene involving actress Kari Keegan resulted in Marcus being removed from set due to a dispute between the two, as the actress protested from doing nudity for the film. Cunningham would step in as director in place of Marcus for the final few days of the film. Approximately half of the film was reshot as Cunningham was unsatisfied with the initial cut of the film. Filming concluded on September 4, 1992.

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Music

The film's musical score was composed by Harry Manfredini, who had previously composed music for the first seven films in the series. A soundtrack album was released by Edel Screen as a CD in the United States in 1993. In July 2025, Terror Vision released the film's soundtrack on cassette.

Release

New Line Cinema released Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday in North America on August 13, 1993.

Home media

The film was released on VHS by New Line Home Entertainment in the United States and Alliance Video in Canada on January 19, 1994. It was later released on DVD in North America by New Line in 2002, and includes two cuts: the theatrical cut, created to receive an R rating from the MPAA, after originally receiving the NC-17 rating, and the unrated (or director's) cut, which runs three minutes longer than the theatrical version and contains material beyond what is allowed under the R rating. In certain regions of the world, including Australia, the DVD was only released with the R-rated version of the film available to view.

On September 13, 2013, Paramount and Warner Bros. co-released Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection in a Blu-ray box set, featuring each of the twelve films in the franchise; this marked the first Blu-ray release of Jason Goes to Hell. This collection is currently out of print, but the film has been released separately in the higher definition format with its successor, Jason X.

Both the theatrical and unrated versions of the film were added to the Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray set that Scream Factory released on October 13, 2020. On May 20, 2025, Arrow Films released a standalone limited edition 4K UHD Blu-ray of the film.

Reception

Box office

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday earned $7.6 million in the United States during its opening weekend across 1,355 screens. The film would go on to gross a final domestic total of $15.9 million and an approximate total of 3,849,050 admissions, making it the third-least attended film in the franchise, narrowly beating Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) and Jason X (2001). It placed at number 86 on the list of the year's Top 100 earners.

Critical response

On the Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday holds a 15% approval rating, based on 20 reviews.

On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 17 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".

The Los Angeles Timess Michael Wilmington praised Gant's performance as well as Harry Manfredini's score, but noted "ludicrous characters", "garbled nonstop gore", and poor lighting as notable faults. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post wrote of the film: "The scriptwriters try to conjure some history/mythology to validate the plot's twists and turns, but the whole thing ends up more confusing than Days of Our Lives on fast-forward." Terry Kelleher of Newsday similarly criticized the plot, referring to it as a "confusing mess," though he conceded the film "offers a little humor."

Stephen Holden of The New York Times noted: "The ninth episode in the phenomenally successful series, which began in 1980, The Final Friday is a largely incoherent movie that generates little suspense and relies for the majority of its thrills on close-up gore...Such gratuitous sadism gives The Final Friday an edge of sourness that is unusual for a horror movie. It doesn't help that Jason's intended victims (and the actors who play them) are pallid sitting ducks." The Boston Globes Betsy Sherman wrote: "First time director Adam Marcus plays around nicely with the F13 cliches, but doesn't have much original to add. The movie has a crowdpleasing final shot that suggests that the real joy ride to hell will be next time around. Maybe."

Writing for Variety, Greg Evans criticized the screenplay as well as Marcus's direction: "With one or two exceptions, freshman director Adam Marcus forgoes the camp humor and inside jokes that marked the tail end of the slasher craze, opting instead for a straightforward Saturday night drive-in approach...Blame Marcus for the film's complete lack of tension and style, but also point a machete or two at a bland, occasionally inept cast and scripters unable to contribute a single innovation to the genre."

Robert Cauthorn of the Arizona Daily Star wrote: "Yeah, there's a lot of shower taking and slaughter here. And a plot about evil bloodlines, tabloid TV, soul shifting, and God knows what else. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's a definite improvement over the other non-movies in the series." The Statesman Journals Ron Cowan wrote: "The ninth version of this fitful series is easily the clumsiest, worst acted, most gory and worst written of the bunch, as ready to indulge in sexual titillation as sadism and oozing bodies." Kory Wilcoxson of The Courier-Journal also criticized the film's gratuitous violence, adding that "the plot is ridiculous, the dialogue wooden and the acting a laugh. But you know that going in. The question is: Is it scary? Not really. It's more disgusting than frightening."

Other media

Comic books

thumb|The unmasked Jason Voorhees from Jason Goes to Hell, as depicted in [[Friday the 13th: The Game.]]

A three-issue comic adaptation of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday written by Andy Mangels was published by Topps Comics. As the comics are based upon the original shooting script of the film, elements that were left out of the film are used in them.

Trading card

Topps also released a series of trading cards for the film.

Other references

  • Freddy Krueger's clawed hand coming out of the ground and taking Jason's mask was a reference to the future crossover Freddy vs. Jason between the two, which had been in development hell since 1987. It was finally finished in 2003, a year after this film's sequel.
  • The film features the appearances of the Kandarian dagger and Necronomicon Ex Mortis from Evil Dead II. Jason, Freddy, and Ash Williams would later meet in the comic book series Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash (a story adapted by writer Jeff Katz from a Freddy vs. Jason 2 screenplay treatment he had written in 2004) and again in Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors.

Video games

The Jason Goes to Hell depiction of Jason Voorhees is featured in 2017's Friday the 13th: The Game. Because of a continuity error in the film regarding Jason's damaged eye, his in-game character model is mirrored from his movie counterpart. As the Gun Media developers explained, "In [Jason Goes to Hell], everyone kind of knows there was a mistake made with Jason's undermask. It's Jason's left eye that's supposed to be damaged, 'cause in Part 4 he takes the machete to the head. But in [Jason Goes to Hell], it was reversed by accident. So we decided to fix it." The game officially reveals Jason's facial appearance from underneath the mask, which was not seen in the film.

References

  • Film page at the Camp Crystal Lake web site
  • Film page at Fridaythe13thfilms.com