Friday the 13th Part: A New Beginning

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (also known as Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning) is a 1985 American slasher psychological horror film and the fifth instalment in the Friday the 13th franchise. The film stars John Shepherd as Tommy Jarvis, the heroic boy from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) who killed Jason Voorhees, and a series of similar murders surrounding the halfway house he currently resides at. Shepherd replaces Corey Feldman, who played Tommy in The Final Chapter, although Feldman makes a cameo appearance in the film's prologue. A New Beginning departs from the Camp Crystal Lake setting and Voorhees-themed mystery of the previous four installments, instead acting as a psychological horror film set at a fictional halfway house in Pennsylvania, and was going to set up a new trilogy of films with a different villain for the series. However, after A New Beginning '​s disappointing reception from fans and steep decline in box-office receipts from The Final Chapter, Jason Voorhees was brought back for Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI and has since been the main antagonist in every entry in the series since. The frequency of graphic violence and gore is expedited in A New Beginning, with a then-series high body count. Aside from its gore, the film has also become known for its explicit nudity and sex scenes, as well as frequent drug use. Peter Bracke's book Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th details that behind the scenes, the production was plagued with hardcore drug use. Produced on a budget of $2.2 million, A New Beginning grossed $21.9 million at the box office in the United States, making it the second poorest performing film in the Friday the 13th series at the time with a steep decline from the previous two entries, both of which had made well over $34 million domestically. In addition to weak box office returns, most critics gave the film negative reviews and is considered one of the worst of all time.

Plot
A young Tommy Jarvis stumbles upon a graveyard while walking through the woods on a rainy night, where he witnesses two grave robbers digging up the corpse of Jason Voorhees. Jason rises from the grave and murders the two graverobbers before advancing towards Tommy.

Awakening from his nightmare, Tommy is delivered to Pinehurst; a Halfway House in which he can hope to acclimate to a normal life. The director Pam introduces Tommy to the head doctor Matt, and up in his assigned room, he meets Reggie, a boy who is visiting his grandfather George who works in the kitchen. Other teens introduced are Robyn, goth Violet, shy Jake, attitude-ridden Vic and compulsive eater Joey. The sheriff brings two more residents; Tina and Eddie after catching them having sex on the neighbor Ethel Hubbard's lawn. The Hubbards show up moments later and threaten to have the "loony bin" closed down. Afterward, Vic and Joey get in a minor altercation, which results in Vic slaughtering Joey with an axe and he is subsequently arrested. Attending ambulance drivers Duke and Roy Burns discover the body and Roy is devastated by angered by the light nature Duke makes of the murder. That night, two teens stranded by the road are killed when an unseen killer shoves a road flare into Vinnie's mouth, then slashes Pete's throat with a machete. The following night, hospital orderly Billy is killed with an axe to the skull while his girlfriend Lana is killed with an axe to the stomach. Panic begins to ensue, but the mayor refuses the sheriff's claim that somehow Jason Voorhees has returned. Meanwhile, Tommy experiences hallucinations of Jason when he takes his medicine while Tina and Eddie run off to have sex.

Ethel's temporary farmhand is murdered watching the teens have sex, then Tina's eyes are gouged out by a pair of shears while Eddie is away for a moment. He returns to discover her, and is killed when his skull is crushed against a tree with a belt. At the house, George gives Reggie permission to visit his visiting brother Demon, and Matt convinces Pam to take Tommy with them. While there, Junior instigates fight with Tommy, and he runs off when Pam tries to stop it. After Reggie and Pam leave, Demon and his girlfriend Nita are killed as well. Pam returns Reggie to the house and they say that Matt and George left to find Tina and Eddie who hadn't returned and Pam leaves to find everyone. At the Hubbard farm, Junior is decapitated riding his bike angrily in the yard and Ethel is slashed in the face with a knife, and left to drown in her stew. While watching a movie, Jake confesses his attraction to Robyn who laughs at him and he storms off, only to be killed by a cleaver to his face.

Later, Robyn goes to bed and discovers Jake's body before she is brutally stabbed from under her bed. The killer moves into Vi's room and stabs her through the stomach while she is dancing to music. Reggie awakens and discovers their bodies in Tommy's room before running into Pam. Jason bursts into the house and chases them out into the rain, after discovering Duke's dead body they double back and Pam finds Matt, dead with a spike through his skull. She returns to the house and George, whose eyes had been gouged out is thrown through a window at her. She rushes toward the barn, chased by Jason, but he is struck by a tractor driven by Reggie. They run into the barn and hide as Jason comes to find them. Tommy comes shortly after and believes Jason to be a hallucination until he is attacked by him. Together they manage to trick Jason into falling out of the loft window and he is killed on a harrow below, his masks torn, revealing that he was Roy Burns all along. At the hospital, the sheriff tells Pam that Joey was Roy's son, and after seeing him slaughtered adopted Jason's M.O. to kill everyone at the house. She goes to Tommy's room who awakens and stabs her with a hidden machete before Tommy awakens to a hallucination of Jason. Facing his fears, he makes Jason's illusion disappear. He hears Pam approaching and throws his bed through the window to make it look like he's escaped. When she rushes in, he appears from behind the door, wearing Jason's hockey mask and holding a knife as the film ends.

Cast

 * Melanie Kinnaman as Pam Roberts
 * John Shepherd as Tommy Jarvis
 * Shavar Ross as Reggie
 * Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis (age 12)
 * Richard Young as Matt
 * Marco St. John as Sheriff Tucker
 * Juliette Cummins as Robin
 * Carol Locatell as Ethel
 * Vernon Washington as George
 * John Robert Dixon as Eddie
 * Tiffany Helm as Violet
 * Jerry Pavlon as Jake
 * Caskey Swaim as Duke
 * Mark Venturini as Vic Faden
 * Anthony Barrile as Vinniek
 * Dominick Brascia as Joey
 * Richard Lineback as Deputy Dodd
 * Bob DeSimone as Billy
 * Jere Fields as Anita
 * Ric Mancini as Mayor Cobb
 * Miguel A. Núñez, Jr. as Demon
 * Corey Parker as Pete
 * Rebecca Wood as Lana
 * Ron Sloan as Junior
 * Debi Sue Voorhees as Tina
 * Dick Wieand as Roy Burns
 * Tom Morga as Jason Voorhees
 * Kimberly Beck as Trish Jarvis (voice only)

Reception
The film managed to gross over $21,930,418, but the film was panned by critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports a rating of 17% "Rotten".