WISE Score
Avg. Tomatometer
Jason takes a very long boat ride and barely sees New York in this spectacularly dull 80s slasher.
11%
11%View →This movie is a bit of a scam. It promises a big city rampage but delivers a claustrophobic boat trip for 70% of its runtime.
It’s not 'so bad it’s good'—it’s mostly just bad. Between the mean-spirited kills and the nonsensical ending involving toxic waste in the sewers, there's very little here to recommend. If your teen is dead-set on watching a classic slasher, steer them toward the original or Part IV. This one is for the bargain bin of history.
This is strictly for older teens (16+) and adults who have a specific appetite for 80s slasher tropes. It’s too violent for kids and too poorly made for anyone else.
It's a slasher movie where the entire plot revolves around a silent killer murdering teenagers in increasingly gruesome ways. There is zero moral center here.
While the idea of Jason in a major city had potential, the movie spends most of its time on a boring cruise ship due to budget constraints. It's a lazy entry in a tired franchise.
Hard R-rated violence. We're talking decapitations, stabbings, and hot steam burns. It also features drug use and sexual situations typical of 80s horror.
There is no intellectual or ethical value here. It's cinematic junk food that's gone stale.
The biggest hurdle for any viewer—teen or adult—is the title. If you go into this expecting a 90-minute urban rampage through the Chrysler Building and Central Park, you will be sorely disappointed. The production famously ran out of budget, which is why "Manhattan" is mostly represented by a cramped cruise ship and a few gritty back alleys in Vancouver pretending to be the Big Apple. By the time Jason actually steps foot on a New York pier, the movie is nearly over.
If your kid is used to the fast-paced, high-stakes geography of modern horror, they’re going to spend the first hour asking when the "real" movie starts. It’s a slow burn that doesn't actually burn; it mostly just simmers in a puddle of 1980s maritime tropes.
This entry is where the franchise fully leaned into the "Jason is a supernatural force" angle, but it does so with zero internal consistency. Jason doesn't just stalk people; he essentially teleports. One second he’s at the end of a hallway, the next he’s inside a locked room.
For a generation raised on the hyper-logical "rules" of movies like Scream or M3GAN, this can be a major friction point. It feels less like a scary supernatural power and more like lazy writing. If your teen is the type to poke holes in a plot, they will have a field day here. The physics of how a massive guy in a hockey mask keeps up with a speeding boat—or navigates a subway system—are never explained, and the movie expects you to just deal with it.
Despite the low scores from critics and the general sense of boredom, there is a specific brand of camp here that modern horror often misses. When the movie finally reaches the city, it stops trying to be a scary slasher and becomes a weird fish-out-of-water comedy. Jason kicking over a boombox or staring down a group of street punks provides the only genuine entertainment in the runtime.
The kills are mean-spirited, but they are also so over-the-top that they lose their edge. It’s hard to be truly disturbed by a movie that ends with a character being defeated by a literal wave of toxic waste. It’s the kind of film that works best as background noise for a sleepover where the goal is to roast the screen rather than actually be frightened.
If your teen wants a "city" horror vibe, this isn't the one. The low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are earned. If they want to see what made Jason an icon, the earlier entries in the series offer much better pacing and more creative practical effects. This eighth installment is strictly for those who want to see the exact moment a franchise officially jumped the shark. It’s a curiosity, a relic of a time when a mask and a title were enough to sell tickets, regardless of whether the movie actually delivered on its promise.
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