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Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) More at IMDbPro »

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287 comments in total

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
The Black Sheep?, 14 June 2006

Author: jonathon_naylor from Manitoba, Canada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The man behind the mask this time ain't our favorite facially-deformed mass murderer, but an impostor. For that reason, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is often labeled the black sheep of the series.

As a fan of the Friday films, it took me a long time to get over Jason's absence (while he does appear in a dream sequence, does that really count?). I mean, you wouldn't make a Rocky film without the Italian Stallion. But once I put that disappointment aside and judged this work on its own merits, I was pleasantly surprised.

Of course A New Beginning is far from perfect. Most of the characters are one-dimensional and unappealing, and the thrills are few and far between. When people complain about the senselessness of gory movies, this is the sort of effort they're talking about. Yet for all its faults, A New Beginning boasts a fairly interesting (by genre standards) storyline, as the maniac slashes his way through a facility for troubled youth. Among the tenants is Tommy Jarvis, still plagued by nightmares of hacking up Jason years earlier. There are even a couple of unintentional laughs amid the corny dialog, and the exciting barn finale (yes, they've done a barn finale before, but bear with us) is a highlight that holds up well.

The biggest failure here is the attempt at a Scooby Dooish mystery element. The writers perhaps envisioned the audience gasping in the final frames when Roy the ambulance driver's face is revealed beneath the goalie mask. But did anyone actually remember this guy? I had no idea who I was looking at until the dialog revealed his identity. Roy just wasn't prominent enough for us to remember. The producers' desire to go in a different, Jason-less direction showed they didn't really understand their audience. These fans ask for something a bit different each time, but they certainly don't want the wheel reinvented (as the failure of Jason Goes to Hell again illustrated eight years later).

More than twenty years after its release, A New Beginning remains the most controversial entry in the series. Many still feel betrayed by the impostor gimmick, but if they can set that aside and try to enjoy this like any other low budget horror flick, they too will be pleasantly surprised.

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11 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Ooooh baby! Ooh Baby!, 9 January 2008

Author: unkle_nasty_fingers from Fraggle Rock

This is the best Jason to watch drunk, it's almost like a Friday the 13th blooper reel. I love the singing on the crapper part, the mod chick doing the robot, the "just wanna earn a meal" guy, Crazy Ethel and Junior, Billy and Llana, that kid from Diff'rent Strokes, the stupid arse ending, and the excessive nudity.

It's a time capsule of sorts, it captures all the bad 80's slasher films in a hour and a half. Bad acting? GOT IT! Ridiculous costumes? GOT IT! Lot's of big haired women topless? GOT IT! No name stars obviously coked out of they're mind? OH THIS MOVIE HAS GOT PLENTY OF THAT! Watch it and laugh, preferably with some friends

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14 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
What is so bad about this film???, 6 May 1999

Author: brandon lee ( no joke!!!) from minniapolis

Friday the 13th is the best film of the series by far. But then when it comes to a choice of the best sequel, I say that Friday the 13th part 5 is the joint best sequel of the series.Part 4 the so called final chapter is equally as good.

I take a look at other peoples comments about this film and it seems to me that I am one of the only people who likes this film.

It has everything that the other sequels failed to capture. It had real suspense, as to who the killer was, I mean we all know it was not Jason, he "was" dead.

It had a lot of different death scenes,and it was all in all a good film. it had the 3 rules for making a successful sequel..... 1)Body count is always bigger 2)The death scenes are more elaborate 3) Never ever ......... oh sorry back to the comments .....Thinking about it, the ending was kind of like a Scooby Doo ending, as to why he did it.

The man responsible had a perfectly simple and plain motive, revenge.I`m not going to say what he wanted revenge for or who he was not it was simple.

I kind of figured it out that the killer was not Jason, when he gets hurt by many objects you can hear him moan in pain, Jason is a member of the Living Dead Club, which means he is the living dead. And he don`t really feel pain.

Tommy Jarvis returns in the film.Corey Feldman is also in it as well, but he has a sort of cameo role. I do not understand why Tommy is in a mental Institute, I mean he is still freaked out by the murder of his mother and friends at the hands of Jason Voorhees.

So if you want to find out who killer is and why he did it, then rent out this film or if you`re a horror fan like me, buy it and add it to your horror collection.

I give this movie a 8 out of 10.Because of the Crazy "new beginning". well it has not really got a new beginning but it is a Pun ........get it????

Do Not worry.

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11 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Demon & Dudley are the highlights, 31 October 2005

Author: spider63 from United States

This was not supposed to be a great movie, and the ending was pretty bad. However, one of the great virtues of low budget movies is that sometimes they find some really funny or unique actors that perform very memorably in their one major role. The mother and son hillbilly couple come to mind. Most of the cast in this movie was pretty entertaining. Now, twenty years later it is interesting to see that most of them never really continued their acting careers.

The main exception in this movie is Miguel Nunez, who has had a very successful career. Here he was trying to look like Michael Jackson in his brief appearance. He was much better in his Tour of Duty TV series. I enjoyed the beginning of this film. The idea of a Foster Home for troubled kids seemed like a fresh twist. Another plus is that most of the characters are not obnoxious. In most of the Slasher movies, the victims are usually so annoying that watching them get slashed is almost fun. In this movie, it was kind of sad to see some of the nice kids get killed off.

The main problems that keep this movie from being a great horror film is that John Sheppard plays the lead character of Tommy Jarvis, and that Jason is not all there. Sheppard is probably the worst actor in this film. He seems to have trouble emoting, speaking, or doing anything in a natural way. The Director seems to have noticed that Sheppard was not cutting the mustard, since most of the last half of the movie concentrates on Reggie (Dudley on Different Strokes) who has a lot more personality and charisma. The other letdown is the bogus surprise ending. I don't want to spoil the ending, but it is dumb and it makes no sense at all. The guy who killed the fat kid went to prison (and safety), and the innocent Foster Kids got killed. The fat kid never knew his father, but the father always knew where his orphan son was? I wonder what the creative team was smoking when they came up with that idea.

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Jason Sits This One Out, 3 August 2006

Author: Duzniak38 from Essex

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning. This sequel is actually one of the best in my opinion, except for the lousy ending. Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning does everything correctly, through the first three quarters of the movie. We start off with the plot of Tommy Jarvis being sent to a halfway house for troubled teens, and there he is plagued by visions of Jason Voorhees. So we now have a fresh twist that the movie isn't to be set about cabins in the woods again, which is a breath of fresh air. Then, we have the absolutely fantastic array of characters, all of which are rememberal and great to watch. Ethel and Junior provide comical relief as the hillbilly mother and son, we feel sympathy for Jake, Violet and Robin, who are all great people to watch interact. The characters are all interesting, and all have their own personal traits which makes them work, instead of them all just wanting to party, drink, smoke and have sex, so this is also a step in a new direction. Out of all of the Friday the 13th instalments, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning probably has the most memorable characters, and some fantastic scenes with them, for example when Anita and Demon sing whilst he is on the toilet, or when Violet is dancing the robot. Friday the 13th does have some very memorable and inventive death scenes as well, although plot holes and continuity issues do fall through think and fast. There is some nudity as well, mainly from Debbie Sue Voorhees, which is very enjoyable. The script can get very lame, for instance the conversations between Billy and Lana. However the twist ending is that Jason Voorhees wasn't behind these murders, but it was instead a copycat who was killing off the teens after his estranged son was hacked up at that very same halfway house. This is quite a let down, but seriously, don't let this put you completely off. Jason takes a vacation, but this filler still delivers the goods.

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11 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
This one's alright..., 13 November 1999

Author: tyhemp-2 from UNitED STateS

Give this movie a break. It is a little lame but at least they tried. They should have just kept Jason in the films and not tried to trick their target audience.

However, at least there was a bit of a mystery to it. Except for the fact that it is at a weird halfway house it is an overall predictable but good horror movie.

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6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Not As Bad as People Say..., 3 February 2005

Author: aaronpynn32-1 from Canada

Out of all the sequels to the Friday the 13th series this one tried hardest to be different and yet get closer to what Friday originally was.

This continues the story of Tommy Jarvis a survivor of the last film. Not to kill Tommy off in the first few minutes but actually let Tommy become an important part of the series. There is a murder at the start of the film that sets up the whole movie. it's done pretty ,much off screen but it is the most brutal and heart-wrenching murder that a film of this type will ever get. Tommy is still very scarred seeing visions of the dead jason in his mind and having psychotic attacks it seems that Tommy may have crossed over and started up on Jason's murderous rampage. The ending is put together well and there are a couple good surprises. Its a shame they never followed up on this one with part 6. Instead they took the easy way out. I don't want to give away the films ending enough people come on doing that. As a slasher film that is 5th in the series Friday injects new blood and does a decent job. It has all the pre-requiste nudity and violence and -ohmigod-an attempt at actually writing a coherent script.

I should know I write these type of films for a living.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
An awesome movie in an awesome series, 3 November 2007

Author: mike grosso from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

the Friday the 13th series is a true masterpiece. this movie in my opinion is one of the best. Tommy is now a teenager at a halfway house when murders start to begin after a patient there is murdered. This movie has some of the coolest deaths I've ever seen. one guy gets a road flare shoved in his mouth. Another guy gets his head crushed with a leather strap, and this movie has a high body count. 22 people die. The killer is no other than the father of the kid who died in the beginning.

high body count great deaths funny characters

10/10 definitely worth watching

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Really bad!, 19 October 2007

Author: raypdaley182 from Coventry

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Again as I always do with these sequels I have to start by saying this. Jason Voorhees is dead, he died drowning as a child in the original, all the killings in that were done by his mother who was also killed in that film. So I will not refer to Jason unless in inverted comma's as he is dead.

Unlike it's 4 predecessors this doesn't start with a recap but with a very obvious dream with Tommy (Corey Feldman) from part 4 watching 2 men exhume the grave of "Jason Voorhees" (which really should be a much smaller grave for a child!) only to wake up as an adult being transferred from a mental institution to a Reform centre called Pinehurst. And the odds of a mental patient being allowed to keep a knife as a possession is zero, OK? The mask adult Tommy uses to scare Reggie is the same mask he wore in part 4 (when his mom told him to get a haircut).

Our mental patients are Joey (the fat guy), Vic (the macho tough guy), Violet (the punky girl), Robin (the cute girl), Eddie (an asshole pretty-boy joker), Tina (the slutty girl) & Jake (the stutterer). Staff are Matt (in charge) & Pam (2nd in charge) & George aka Gramps (the cook & Grandfather of Reggie). They are hated by redneck neighbours Ethel and her son Junior.

1st dead is Joey (killed by Vic for being annoying), 2nd dead is Vinny (a local wise guy), 3rd dead is his buddy Vinny (another local wise guy). 4th dead is Billy (an orderly from the mental institute), 5th dead was Lana (A waitress & Billy's girlfriend). 6th dead is a drifter whose name we never got. 7th dead was Tina and 8th dead is Eddie (we assume the strap around his head killed him).

Pam takes Reggie & Tommy to meet Demon (Reggie's older brother, who I recognised from Return Of The Living Dead) and we also meet his girlfriend Nita. The guy beating up Junior in the long-shots wasn't the actor playing Tommy (he was too tall). 8th dead is Nita and Demon is 9th to die.

Pam goes off to look for Matt, George, Tommy, Eddie & Tina. Junior is 10th dead (decapitated in his yard) closely followed by Ethel who is 11th dead. 12th dead is Jake (we assume, never seeing it). Unlucky 13th dead is Robin (in her bed, doing nothing) and Violet is 14th dead (just dancing in her room). Reggie finds all the bodies of the dead patients in Tommy's bedroom. Pam's scream sounds very fake (she's very slow to react) and finally someone dressed as "Jason" smashes into the house.

Outside on the road they find a hospital van containing an orderly, 15th dead. (Good goof is how The Killer was behind them but appears in front of them by the van without ever passing them) Pam finds Matt's body, 16th dead. She runs back to the house and the body of George (17th dead) is thrown through a window (this has happened in 2 previous "Friday" films and is getting old).

Pam is chased by the guy dressed as "Jason" (the stripe on his mask is the wrong colour, it's blue but should be red) and saved by Reggie driving a bulldozer into The Killer (which would have at least broken his ribs if not killed him). Pam fights & cuts The Killer with a chainsaw and then Tommy finally arrives (so we now know he's NOT The Killer), gets slashed across the chest and stabs The Killer in the thigh with his knife. The Killer climbs the ladder FAR TOO EASILY for a man hit by a bulldozer, slashed in the arm by a chainsaw and stabbed in the thigh.

Reggie & Pam work together to knock The Killer out of the barn but it takes Tommy to chop off his hand and The Killer is impaled on a hay-bailer losing his mask revealing him as Roy, the paramedic. Joey turns out to be his son and his death sent him over the edge.

The "Fake" death of Pam is shown to be a nightmare of Tommy's. His final hallucination is of the real Killer (the mask from the previous film). I find it hard to believe Tommy would have been allowed to keep the mask Roy wore (it'd be evidence, surely?) and there is no way they would have taken a knife with a wounded patient either.

The weak ending is supposed to make us think that Tommy's delusions of the "Jason" Killer of the previous movie have finally taken control of his mind and he has become "Jason".

Really awful ending.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, 8 July 2007

Author: TheSingingReviewer from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is another fine sequel in the Friday the 13th franchise. This has a good body count and some gory and graphic scenes. The film takes place some years after Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and now Tommy is 18 but since he killed Jason he's been traumatised by it all and is sent to a mental hospital just outside of a small town, this one is different since they are free to roam around as they please. Tommy keeps seeing Jason and remembering what happened, soon after the kid gets axed the murders begin by a mysterious man wearing a boiler, hockey mask and carrying a machete. The police believe that it's Jason by the mayor thinks over wise since Jason cremated but of course he isn't, soon more people are being killed off by the killer and after each murder we keep seeing Tommy lying in his bed covered in sweat making us think that he could be the killer since he keeps seeing Jason.

The killings soon take place inside the mental hospital and Tommy is nowhere to be seen, Reggie and Pam are the only ones there and find themselves being chased by the killer who could be Tommy or the real Jason or maybe someone else.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is a great sequel to the franchise. Check it out. 10/10

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