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The Good and Bad of Jason Rising: A Friday the 13th Fan Film
Image Credit: Red Crow Films
The Good and Bad of Jason Rising: A Friday the 13th Fan Film
Jason Rising is a Friday the 13th fan film that, I believe, was released in 2021 (it actually may have been later, but the movie’s IMDB page shows that it was released in 2021). Directed by James Street, Jason Rising takes place after the events of 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the fourth Friday the 13th movie and the third sequel to the 1980 original. Now, when I say “takes place after the events of The Final Chapter,” I mean that Jason Rising functions as the “real” fifth Friday the 13th movie, ignoring everything that officially happened after the release of The Final Chapter (in other words, everything from 1985’s Friday the 13th: A New Beginning to 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason didn’t happen in the world of Jason Rising). Quite a few Jason/Friday the 13th fan films seem to do this kind of thing; picking a Friday the 13th movie to use as a starting off point and then doing a “real” sequel to that movie. I have a feeling that part of the reason why fan film creators do this is because they want to feature a specific Jason look from one of the official movies and doing a “proper sequel” is how they justify making their movie.
Anyway, the basic plot of Jason Rising picks up where The Final Chapter ends, with the cops burying Jason in the woods in a gigantic crate/coffin thing that’s wrapped in chains. Almost four decades later, the headless demon zombie ghost of Jason’s mom Pamela appears, unburies Jason, and Jason starts killing people again. At the same time as all of that is happening, two local cops team up with two U.S. marshals to track down three escaped convicts (the convicts, three women, kill a guy buy cutting his dick off and then run away). The escaped convicts eventually hang out at the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake and wait for nightfall so they can keep running, figuring that the cops won’t go looking for them in the “cursed” old camp. The escaped convicts are, obviously, very wrong about that. That, essentially, is what happens in Jason Rising.
So, what’s good and what’s bad about Jason Rising?
Warning: this review contains spoilers
The Good
Has two worthwhile special effect set pieces: One of my big complaints with Jason/Friday the 13th movies that I’ve seen is the general lack of creative kills or big special effects moments. I mean, that was always one of the big draws for the official movies. What sort of gruesome nastiness and creative kill would the filmmakers and special effects team come up with? The fan films I’ve seen so far haven’t really tried to replicate that. Is it a budget issue? A know how issue? I don’t know. Jason Rising is one of the few Jason/Friday the 13th fan films that I’ve seen that actually tries to have creative kills/big hooha special effects moments. Jason Rising has a terrific looking machete through the back of the head sequence, where we get to see the machete go through the victim’s head. It looks incredibly painful and nasty. The movie also has a sequence where Jason goes full Predator on a US Marshal and rips out the poor dude’s spinal column and skull. Jason then uses that spinal column and skull to attack another person. Freaking amazing.
Jason looks fierce: Jason as portrayed by Dan Kyle, looks pretty close to the Jason we saw the now late but always great Ted White play in The Final Chapter. He’s big and beefy, but he can also move quickly and comes off as a formidable monster when he’s just standing there. And above all else, when Kyle’s Jason wields a machete, or any other weapon, he’s terrifying. That’s what you want in your Jason Voorhees when you make a Jason movie.
Has a headless Pamela Voorhees: After being beheaded by Alice in the very first Friday the 13th flick, Pamela Voorhees appears, what, in four more movies (parts 2 and 3, Freddy vs. Jason, and the 2009 remake)? We’ve seen her as a hallucination/ghost, a zombie, a severed head, and as a person (in the remake). It took Jason Rising to show the world Jason’s Mom as a headless zombie that pulls her son’s gigantic coffin out of the ground and kills a woman. And it’s gloriously weird and scary. Because, I mean, what the hell are you going to do if you are attacked by a goddamn headless zombie wielding a weapon in the woods? How are you going to fight back against that? Who the hell would ever expect to see that kind of thing? I’m actually surprised that no one has made a “proper sequel” fan film to the original Friday the 13th where that’s the entire movie: a headless Pamela Voorhees going on a killing spree. Or, has someone actually made that movie and I just haven’t seen it?
Two fan favorite cameos: It’s becoming a thing to get actors from the original/official movies to show up in Jason/Friday the 13th fan films. The Never Hike Alone series has featured Thom Matthews, Vincent “Vinny” Guastaferro, the immortal Larry Zerner, Deborah Voorhees, and several others. Lar Park-Lincoln, Kevin Spirtas, and Terry Kiser appeared in that The New Blood sequel Rose Blood: A Friday the 13th Fan Film. Jason Rising continues that trend with appearances by Adrienne King as a badass that takes out Jason at the end, and Amy Steel does a voice cameo as Dr. Ginny Field. Their appearances are fun as hell, shocking even, although the King/”Alice” return makes no sense (I’ll get to that later). But it’s still plenty fun to have Alice and Ginny appear again.
Jason uses a chainsaw: It’s quite amazing to think that Jason never used a chainsaw in any of the official Friday the 13th movies. The closest thing he ever used to a chainsaw was that circular saw weed whacker thing in The New Blood. Jason has certainly been attacked by a chainsaw (in part 2 and in part 5. And, yes, I’m including Roy’s fake Jason here. Deal with it). In Jason Rising, Jason finally gets his hands on a chainsaw and goes hog wild with it. How he uses the chainsaw is a bit disappointing (it would have been sweet if the movie used this moment for a big hooha set piece but for whatever reason it didn’t happen) but it’s still Jason using a chainsaw. That really does count for something.
Has anyone made a Leatherface vs. Jason fan film yet? A sort of “dueling chainsaws” type deal? Because, after Jason Rising, I think it needs to happen.
The Bad
The story makes no sense: Look, I know it’s probably bizarre to hear someone say “none of this makes any sense” when talking about a Friday the 13th movie, but it’s true when it comes to Jason Rising. The fan film makes absolutely no sense. At all. It’s a “proper sequel” to a movie that was originally released in 1984 where the monster killer, who was portrayed as a regular human that was really hard to kill, is buried in the woods, somehow doesn’t decompose over nearly four decades being buried and is still alive, and has a headless zombie as a sort of killer tag team partner. There’s also the little fact of how The Final Chapter ends, with Jason having a machete buried into the side of his head, Jason’s head then sliding down that machete, and then Jason being hacked into God knows how many pieces by Tommy. That stuff is mentioned at the beginning of Jason Rising, but when we see Jason in the coffin he’s still pretty intact. How the hell is that possible?
And, Jesus Christ, how the hell could Alice still be alive? How the hell does someone survive a screwdriver through the temple?
The movie ignores everything that was established in parts 2-4: I’ll repeat this again, because it’s pretty important. Jason in parts 2-4 is, more or less, portrayed as a real guy who is incredibly hard to kill. At the end of part 3 he gets an axe to the head. And at the end of part 4, again, he has his head destroyed with a machete, and he is then absolutely destroyed by Tommy. How can a real guy, even a real guy that’s incredibly hard to kill, survive all of that? Even in a slasher horror flick, that would seem unlikely. And when you consider that the final shot of The Final Chapter implies that Tommy is going to be the killer if the series continues, Jason Rising shouldn’t even be a thing. Jason Rising should instead be Tommy Rising. Because isn’t Tommy becoming the killer what a “proper” sequel to The Final Chapter should be about? It would, if any of this made an iota of sense.
The movie makes Jason supernatural: Jason didn’t become properly supernatural until 1986’s Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. In parts 2-4, he’s a regular guy that’s really hard to kill. Whatever weird sort of supernatural stuff that appears in parts 2-4, it’s usually a hallucination or a dream. It isn’t something that’s real and actually happening. And the end of The Final Chapter doesn’t work if Jason is actually supernatural because it wouldn’t be shocking. A real person wouldn’t be able to survive a machete to the head and then getting chopped up. Jason Rising just ignores all of that and makes Jason full on supernatural. He gets buried in the woods and somehow doesn’t decompose over four decades and he’s still alive. How is that possible?
See, this is why making a sequel to The Final Chapter that ignores what the hell happened in The Final Chapter is problematic. Because how the hell is it even possible?
Why would there only be 2 US Marshals looking for three escaped convicts?: If three convicts escaped from prison after killing a guy, why would there only be two US Marshals after them? Why wouldn’t there be multiple Marshals, FBI agents, and state cops getting involved? Even if Jason Rising takes place in what amounts to a sparsely populated rural county, if three convicts escaped in the area there would be a massive law enforcement presence. There just would be. So that’s just unbelievable (and, yes, I know, that’s also a weird thing to say about a Friday the 13th movie, official or fan film).
The ending is bullshit: So Alice kills both Jason and the zombie Pamela (the headless Pamela zombie eventually becomes a zombie with a head), Alice takes Pamela’s newly decapitated zombie head and puts it in a box, and Jason is put back into his crate coffin thing and dropped into Crystal Lake, only for Jason to appear again during the end credits (he comes out of the water, puts his hockey mask back on, and then looks up at a house, which I assume is Alice’s). What the hell kind of bullshit is all of that? Why wouldn’t the remaining cops blow up Jason’s body with dynamite (someone in the area has to have dynamite or some sort of explosive handy)? Why wouldn’t the cops run Jason’s body through a wood chipper? Why wouldn’t they cut up Jason’s body with a chainsaw and burn up the pieces? Or, at a bare minimum, cut off Jason’s goddamn head? Why would the remaining cops go through all of the crap they go through in the movie and then just put Jason back in the coffin and put the coffin in the lake? It’s totally unbelievable.
Is it possible that the “newly supernatural” Jason in Jason Rising is like Victor Crowley in the Hatchet movies? He can be killed, but he’ll just come back like absolutely nothing happened?
Conclusion
The movie makes no sense and, when you start thinking about it in relation to the goddamn rules already established by parts 2-4, Jason Rising is likely to annoy you. It certainly annoyed me. But, I can’t deny that, if you watch Jason Rising as its own thing, as “just a movie,” it’s pretty good. It’s generally well made, has a nice look, has a good enough cast, and is only a little over an hour long. For a Jason/Friday the 13th fan film, that kind of stuff counts. And even with my nitpicky brain working overtime, I can say that Jason Rising is enjoyable enough. And that’s okay.
I do wish someone explained to me why, if you’re going to do one of these fan films that’s supposed to be a “proper sequel” to an official movie, you don’t follow the already established rules? Am I missing something here?
Rating: 7.0/10.0
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Check out my other Jason/Friday the 13th Fan Film Reviews!
The Good and The Bad of Death Curse: A Friday the 13th Fan Film
The Good and the Bad of Friday the 13th: Vengeance
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Well, I think that’ll be about it for now. Don’t forget to sign up with disqus if you want to comment on this article and any other 411 article. You know you want to, so just go do it.
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