Kevin Coughlin
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EARLY ACCESS ~ JASON TAKES MANHATTAN
🕑 Added 2025-07-09 21:56:13 +0000 UTCFriday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) is one of the most gloriously false advertisements in horror history. Jason doesn’t take Manhattan—he barely visits it. What he actually takes is a cruise ship, the patience of the audience, and roughly 80% of the movie's runtime spent floating on a budget version of the Titanic with a cast of future corpses.
Look, let’s be honest: by this point in the franchise, the writers were just throwing darts at a map. “What if Jason goes to space? Nah, not yet. What about Manhattan? Perfect. Let’s get him to New York!” And then they promptly forgot to actually put him in New York until the last 20 minutes.
But you know what? For all its clunky plotting, weird pacing, and the fact that Jason somehow teleports around like a slasher Roomba, this movie is weirdly fun if you lean into the nonsense.
The cruise ship section is pure Friday the 13th filler: horny teens, inexplicably bad decision-making, and Jason walking around the ship like he’s just trying to find the buffet. The kills? Still solid. Guitar to the face? Classic. Sauna rock to the chest? A+ creativity. Jason even knocks a guy’s head clean off with one punch on a Manhattan rooftop and it’s probably one of the greatest moments in the entire franchise.
When Jason finally gets to the city, it’s pure tourist-mode Jason: stalking through Times Square like he’s trying to catch a matinee, kicking over boom boxes, scaring punks with his zombie face, and basically being the best unpaid street performer of 1989. That single shot of Jason in Times Square? Worth it. That should’ve been the entire movie. Imagine Jason at a Yankees game. Jason on the subway. Jason trying to hail a cab. Missed opportunity, people.
The “ending” is… look, there’s toxic sludge, a random sewer flood, Jason turns into a little boy again, and none of it makes a lick of sense. Continuity? Gone. Logic? Sunk with the cruise ship.
Part VIII is a disaster, but it’s a beautiful disaster. It’s Friday the 13th on cruise control—ridiculous, frustrating, and somehow completely entertaining. It doesn’t live up to its own poster, but sometimes watching Jason awkwardly wander through a budget Love Boat is its own reward. You didn’t sign up for Shakespeare—you signed up to watch Jason punch a dude’s head off. And you got it.
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