Tommy Jarivs (John Shepherd), who killed Jason in the fourth film, is the newest patient at a counseling facility that happens to be near Jason’s old stomping grounds. After Tommy shows up, people start dying. Is it Tommy, someone else wearing a hockey mask, or has Jason returned from the dead?
Set in some kind of weird 1950s/1980s hybrid-world where guys with leather jackets and pompadours drive hotrods and girls in pink work at the takeout joint (she just needed skates to finish the look), Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning is a rehash of the earlier films, with the victims having even less personality, but at least the cameraman knows how to work the equipment (which wasn’t true of Friday the 13th).
A bit of comic relief is added in the form of inbred yokels, but they aren’t very funny, and the scenes with Tommy dealing with his mental problems are taken as deep, meaningful drama. Hint: If your film is about a guy cutting up people and has no greater aspirations, try and make it fun.
What, if anything, sets this movie apart from the others in the series is the higher body count (loads of teens walk in and get killed), increased number of topless women (if sensation is all that counts, adding a bit of nudity to the violence is a smart move), and the identity of the killer. This film goes back to the series roots, where you don’t see the killer for a majority of the murders. A number of very questionable critics have attacked Part V for making it a mystery instead of just having old Jason do the exact same thing again. There are plenty of flaws in this flick, but not repeating every aspect of the last three films is not one of them.
It would be nice to spend a few seconds getting to know characters before they are chopped up, but I guess it doesn’t really matter—no small improvements were going to make Part V watchable.
The one laugh is unintentional, as a kid saves the girl from “Jason” by driving slow-moving construction equipment at him. It’s a serious version of the steamroller attack from A Fish Called Wanda (and also Austin Powers). That’s as good as it gets.