Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is the kind of sequel that doesn’t politely continue a legend so much as grab it by the collar and shake it—loud, lurid, and pulsing with a rude, grindhouse energy that’s hard to fake. Danny Steinmann stages the mayhem with a showman’s appetite for creative, outrageous kills, and the synthy score pushes the whole thing along like a midnight-movie dare you can’t quite refuse. John Shepherd’s Tommy Jarvis gives the film a surprisingly jittery, haunted center, so amid the sleaze and splatter there’s a real sense of a young man trying to outrun a nightmare that keeps changing shape. It’s not for the squeamish or the prudish—there’s plenty of gore, nudity, and bad behavior—but if you want a Friday that takes a bold swing and delivers messy, memorable fun, this is the one that might win you over.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is clearly trying to keep the franchise alive by shifting focus to Tommy Jarvis and leaning hard into sleazier, louder 80s exploitation—more bodies, more skin, more shock. The problem is it plays like a checklist of kills and cheap antics rather than a suspenseful slasher, with choppy pacing, thin characters, and a mean-spirited, leering tone that can make the violence feel more crude than scary. If you’re coming for classic Jason mythos, tight tension, or clever set pieces, this one will likely feel like a cynical detour. Still, if you’re a completionist or you enjoy grimy, trashy drive-in horror where the main “story” is just an excuse to rack up outrageous murders, it delivers exactly that.