New On Netflix: Jason Goes To Hell

Disgustingly, needlessly gory but also more ghoulishly creative than any of its eight predecessors combined, this ninth entry in the Friday the 13th series opens with Jason being blown to smithereens by the FBI, which now allows him to transfer his evil spirit from host to host (dumb G-men!). It’s soon revealed that only a member of Jason’s bloodline can truly kill him once and for all (of course!) and he’ll come back to life if he manages to possess one of his kin (of course, also!). A mystical dagger fits into all of this as well, though the real doozy comes right at the end, when Freddy Krueger’s glove comes out of the ground and drags Jason’s hockey mask down into the fiery pit o’ Hades itself — perhaps the most fan-pleasing moment in the history of horror cinema. That closing gesture was supposed to set up Freddy vs. Jason, but that bit of wonderment wouldn’t come for another ten years, leaving room for both Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and Jason X (2001) to hack and slash whilst New Line execs shuffled their feet.