8. Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter - House-Renting Teenagers
Before the film jumped up off at the deep end with the musical-sounding Jason Takes Manhattan and the space opera that was Jason X, the Friday The 13th franchise was happy keeping its sights trained on Camp Crystal Lake, watching a gigantic hockey-masked psychopath (and originally his mother) cut his way through a swath of identikit teens and the local law enforcement. And you know what? It was fun. Even when it was stupid as all hell (you know, before Manhattan, the metal-sounding Jason Goes To Hell or the Jason X travesty), there was a certain kitsch thrill in watching people succumb to a man the size of a milk float in some tremendously schlocky horror flicks. Yet to give the Jason films credit, they did attempt to re-jig the people-congregating-at-the-campsite numerous times, actually bringing real life consequences to the silliness going on down at the lake and having the series continue from where it left off between installments two and three. It's obvious why they did this though the franchise is considered part of the formulaic slasher furniture, they were at least trying to get away from the lobbing-teens-into-the-meat-grinder approach. But come The Final Chapter (spoiler, it's not the final chapter), the writers threw a collective screw it and returned Jason to familiar climes, obliterating any teens who dare rent a holiday home near his habitat. I guess this is fair enough you don't come to a Jason flick to see drama, you come to see sheer, unadulterated violence. But still, what were those teens thinking? Granted, everyone thought Jason was dead (he starts the film by murdering his way out of a coroner's office), but it's not as if that hasn't stopped him coming back before. Look, I'll put it like this. I'm quite a fan of Centreparcs their holiday sites are cheap, you get decent accommodation and the staff are lovely and friendly. However, if I heard through hearsay (not the band, never the band) that the place was cursed, I wouldn't give the place a second look, and that's if the curse was only a rumour. If people had died at this 'cursed place' not a short time ago via some machete-swinging loon not a short amount of time ago, then you couldn't even pay me to stay there. Yet apparently, the very real threat of past-film violence to similar teens didn't stop these folks, and they paid the price (no pun intended).