The One That Swung—and Missed
Jason Voorhees is dead. Long live Jason Voorhees. Or… is he?
With Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, the franchise attempts something different, even bold—but ends up with a film that feels more like a placeholder than a rebirth. It promises a new chapter, yet mostly delivers familiar clichés with a new mask. This is the awkward middle child of the franchise, stuck between its gory roots and its eventual descent into full-blown zombie slasher madness.
Plot Summary: Copy-Paste Carnage
Set a few years after The Final Chapter, Part V follows a now-teenaged Tommy Jarvis (played by John Shepherd), a trauma-stricken young man bouncing between psychiatric facilities, still haunted by his encounter with Jason. He’s sent to Pinehurst, a halfway house in the woods, filled with troubled teens and thinly drawn adult characters.
Soon, bodies start dropping. The kills are frequent but lack the punch of previous entries. Suspicion falls on Tommy, who’s emotionally unstable and prone to violent outbursts. But then there’s the twist: the killer isn’t Jason—it’s Roy, a paramedic with a grudge. Jason isn’t resurrected here (yet), but the icon’s shadow looms large. And therein lies the problem.
Tommy Jarvis: Missed Potential
Tommy Jarvis is one of the few returning characters in the franchise with any real development across films. Here, he’s portrayed as a shell-shocked, mostly mute presence. It could have been an opportunity to explore trauma and the effects of surviving Jason, but instead Tommy is reduced to jump scares, wide-eyed staring, and awkward silences.
John Shepherd does what he can with the role, but the script gives him little to work with. We’re meant to wonder if Tommy himself is the killer—though this thread fizzles by the finale. By the end, we’re left with more questions than answers, and not in a good way.
The “Not-Jason” Problem
The film’s biggest sin is marketing itself as another Jason flick and then pulling a bait-and-switch. The killer wears the mask. He uses the machete. But it’s not Jason. It’s Roy, a guy we saw for maybe 45 seconds early in the movie. His motive? Revenge for the death of his son (a patient at Pinehurst), who was murdered in a sudden and bizarre outburst early in the film.
The twist might have worked if Roy had been developed beyond “guy with a mustache who drives an ambulance.” Instead, the reveal feels cheap, and worse, it undercuts everything that came before.
The Kills: Quantity Over Quality
Credit where it’s due: Part V delivers on the body count. There are 22 deaths in total, more than any of the films before it. But there’s a hollowness to the carnage. Few kills are memorable. Most are edited to avoid the X-rating, and the camera cuts away right when things get interesting. Compare this to Tom Savini’s brutal, inventive effects in earlier entries, and Part V comes up lacking.
Sex, Screams, and Sleaze
This entry also veers harder into sleaze than its predecessors. There’s a gratuitous amount of nudity, often devoid of context or character development. It feels like the filmmakers leaned into exploitation tropes to compensate for the lack of Jason. You could argue that’s part of the charm, but even by franchise standards, A New Beginning feels uncomfortably voyeuristic at times.
Highlights (Yes, There Are a Few)
Not everything is a disaster. Some performances are solid—Shavar Ross as Reggie “the Reckless” is a welcome burst of energy and one of the few likable characters. The setting, a run-down, semi-therapeutic halfway house, is at least different from the usual cabins and campsites.
There’s also an attempt—albeit clumsy—to deal with the psychological aftermath of Jason’s terror, which is rare for this series. The opening dream sequence, where Jason rises from the grave in a thunderstorm, is moodily shot and effective, even if it ultimately means nothing.
Final Thoughts: A Franchise at a Crossroads
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning is a film stuck between identity crises. It tries to move on from Jason but realizes halfway through that Jason is the reason anyone’s watching. The result is a movie that doesn’t commit to its ideas, and doesn’t trust its audience.
Is it the worst Friday film? Not quite. It’s competent in a grindhouse kind of way. But it’s also uninspired. It plays like a slasher checklist: sex, gore, screams, twist, repeat. The only problem is, the soul’s missing.
The Verdict
Friday the 13th Part V is like a tribute band trying to mimic the legend. It hits the notes, stumbles on the rhythm, and leaves you wanting the real thing. That real thing returns in Part VI: Jason Lives, when the franchise finally embraces its supernatural core.
Until then, this entry remains the oddball—a film that dared to try something different, but didn’t quite know how to sell it.
Score: 5/10
One for the completists. Skip it if you want pure Jason carnage. Watch it if you’re curious about what almost was.
🔪 The Friday the 13th Retrospective Series
A look back at every machete swipe, scream, and sequel in the Friday the 13th franchise:
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Friday the 13th (1980) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-1980-the-one-that-started-it-all/
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Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-part-2-1981-the-birth-of-jason-the-middle-child-of-the-franchise/
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Friday the 13th Part III (1982) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-part-iii-1982-mask-on-shirt-off-and-body-count-rising/
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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-the-final-chapter-1984-the-best-lit-death-march-yet/
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Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-part-v-a-new-beginning-1985/
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Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-part-vi-jason-lives-1986/
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Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-part-vii-the-new-blood-1988/
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Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-part-viii-jason-takes-manhattan-1989/
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Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) – https://pochepictures.com/jason-goes-to-hell-1993-the-body-hopping-butcher-and-the-death-of-a-slasher/
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Jason X (2001) – https://pochepictures.com/jason-x-2001-a-space-odyssey-of-slashes-and-silliness/
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Freddy vs. Jason (2003) – https://pochepictures.com/freddy-vs-jason-2003-when-nightmares-meet-crystal-lake/
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Friday the 13th (2009) – https://pochepictures.com/friday-the-13th-2009-the-brutal-reboot-that-forgot-the-soul/
