Corey Feldman returns as Tommy Jarvis, the boy who killed Jason, but then, because Corey was busy appearing in The Goonies, we skip ahead a few years to find an older Tommy (now played by John Shepherd) on his way to the Pinehurst Institute, a halfway house for troubled teens. Tommy is still being haunted by visions of Jason, but hopefully life at the halfway house will stabilize him and prepare him to re-enter society. Unfortunately, just after Tommy's arrival, one of the residents is brutally murdered by one of the more mentally unstable youth (who was, for some reason, permitted to chop wood with an axe despite being clearly psychopathic). For some reason, the institute is not shut down, and more bodies start piling up. Has Jason returned from the dead? Is Tommy in fact behind the murders? Or is it the shifty, bug-eyed bit player whom the camera lingers on just a bit too long during his few scenes?
(spoilers ahead!)
That's right, the killer in part five is not Jason, which is a major reason franchise fans hate this one. Honestly, I didn't think it was that big a deal. The guy's motive really doesn't make sense once you think about it, but we still get to see a guy in a hockey mask running around hacking up teenagers, and it's easier to believe that there's a copycat killer than to buy the resurrection of Jason in every damn movie in the franchise (which didn't die, even after another "Final" Friday). Part five also reveals that Jason was cremated, making his resurrection in part six even more questionable.
(/spoilers)
There is a lot of nudity on display here, but only one oddly tame sex scene, which was apparently heavily cut by the MPAA, along with many of the death scenes. There are the usual stabbings and decapitations, along with some nasty stuff like hedge clippers to the eyes. It's a shame we'll probably never see an uncut version, but with around twenty kills, the body count is probably the highest in the series. There aren't that many kids at the halfway house, so the film starts introducing characters for the sole purpose of killing them off, leading to some truly bizarre scenes. One involves a pair of foul-mouthed greasers who seem to have wandered in from a '50s movie; another involves a couple singing to each other through the walls of an outhouse in which the male is taking a dump.
As our hero/possible killer, Shepherd says maybe 25 words during the entire film, but he does a good job of appearing twitchy and uncomfortable, understandable given the events his character has experienced. No one else is particularly memorable, except for Tiffany Helm as the goth/punk rock chick who enjoys doing the robot to new wave music alone in her room.
Ridiculous moments like this are fun, and, while it's never really scary, there's definitely a mean streak running through the film. With its high body count, abundant nudity, and delightful musical interludes, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning isn't entirely deserving of its poor reputation.
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