Aaron Dane Shanley’s review published on Letterboxd:
"Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter" (1984)
* dir: Joseph Zito
* Horror / Slasher / Jason's Finest Hour
[ ★★★★ / ★★★★★ ]
What was the sugar glass budget for this thing. My God. They go through more windows than a PC store in the mid-90s.
From the moment that the legitimately impressive unbroken opening shot begins the film (a long ominous tour around the previous campground while steadily revealing our characters and Jason's "corpse"), you just know that you're playing in a much more aesthetically interesting pool here. Joseph Zito has a definite skill in cultivating a nicely forboding atmosphere of impending doom and suffocating dread (see: underrated 1981 slasher flick "The Prowler"), so it's no surprise that this is arguably the most genuinely frightening of any of the "Friday The 13th" flicks.
To wit: there's a scene where somebody is repeatedly screaming "RUN, HE'S KILLING ME" to another person as Jason brutally claw-hammers him to death and it's maybe the most upsetting death in this entire series so far. And it's mostly obscured by shadow and creative blocking! It's all due to his believably unhinged frayed-nerve reaction and the fact that he's using his literal last moments on earth to attempt to save someone. Really good stuff.
Tommy Jarvis is a weird little creep, though. Y'all need Jesus.
