BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Smoreni Zmaj This franchise is becoming more and more meaningless. The fifth part itself may not be so disastrous, but in the context of a franchise it is completely superfluous nonsense. I think this is by far the most unimaginative franchise I've ever seen - if you've seen one you've seen them all. It's not boring, but it's a waste of time in every way.4/10

Sam Panico Presenting the scummiest, vilest Friday of them all - a film packed with more kills (22!), more nudity and more drugs behind the scenes than several of the other films combined!Years after killing off Jason, Tommy Jarvis has nightmares that the man he killed has returned. That's why he's in Pinehurst Halfway House, where Pam Roberts and Dr. Matt Letter (Richard Young, who gives young Indy his fedora in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) are trying to help him to get over his violent past and the death of his mother.But are there a bunch of teens to get killed? Sure there are. There's Reggie, Tommy's roomate whose grandfather George works there as a cook. Plus, we have Robin (Juliette Cummins, Slumber Party Massacre 2), Violet (Tiffany Helm, O.C. & Stiggs, Reform School Girls), Jake, Vic (Suicide from Return of the Living Dead), Joey, Eddie and Tina (Debi Sue Voorhees, no relation). There's also rich neighbors Ethel Hubbard and Junior, who want the halfway house closed down.What follows is a bit of a mystery movie, at least for a bit. Is one of the kids the killer, like Vic, or has Jason come back from the dead? Even the end of the movie leaves that up in the air, to be honest. It's kind of a mess, but along the way there's a ton of blood and gore.Danny Steinmann is the director here, perhaps better known for The Unseen and Savage Streets. Well, maybe not by most people, but by me? Of course. He also broke into movies by directing and writing the adult film High Rise and probably would have created more films in the Friday the 13th saga, but a bicycling accident and long recovery meant that this would be the last film that he would direct. The working title for this film was Repetition. So what happens after this? Well, what do you think?

TheLittleSongbird 'Friday the 13th' may have been panned by critics when first released but since then it is one of the most famous and influential horror films, the franchise containing one of horror's most iconic villains. The film is popular enough to become a franchise and spawn several sequels of varying quality and generally inferior to the one that started it all of. The fifth film in the series 'A New Beginning' is the most maligned 'Friday the 13th' film by critics and fans, although it has garnered a cult following and its fair share of defence over time. To me, 'A New Beginning' is better than its reputation and that it tries to do something different is laudable. Also do not think it's the worst 'Friday the 13th' film. Having said that, the disappointment is understandable. There are good merits here, but it also did fall short to me. Starting with 'A New Beginning's' strengths, the best things about it are the as ever haunting music score and the terrific performance, both disturbing and moving, of John Shepherd. There are a few darkly funny moments, a few creepy ones and some of the death scenes are creative. The nightmare sequences are stylish and as nightmarish as one would hope. It's a pretty decent looking film, not cinematic art (but in all honesty that can never be expected from a 'Friday the 13th' film) but not amateurish.However, there are things that work against 'A New Beginning'. From my understanding, It is not that the film is different in the lack of Jason (this didn't bother me at all and is an insignificant issue), the more tongue-in-cheek tone and the idea it tried to introduce that irked fans, but the generally misguided way it was executed. More problematic are the problems as a standalone. The acting is not good (Shepherd is the sole exception), Melanie Kinnaman being awful, and the clumsy and far too simple dialogue, that slips more into vulgar camp than darkly tongue-and-cheek, and the mostly annoying and dull stereotypes passing for characters fare worse (the only one to be interesting and get proper development is Tommy). 'A New Beginning' has the highest body count, and while there are some creative and unsettling deaths (others less so, hurt by gratuity and predictability) it was almost as if there were too many death scenes that gives one not that much time to compose themselves after each one. There is not enough suspense, the creepiness is too far and between and the story is thin and very hackneyed, with one of the series' silliest endings. The mystery elements don't work, being far too obvious, and neither does the identity of the killer, the killings committed by somebody that is not in it much in their real guise and doesn't have much presence.In summation, not that bad and not deserving of its black sheep reputation but a long way from being great. 5/10 Bethany Cox

a_chinn A low point for the the overrated horror franchise is minus Jason for most of the film and doesn't even take place at Crystal Lake. The story picks-up from the previous film with Jason coming back to life and then possessing Corey Feldman's character, Tommy Jarvis. The story then time jumps years later with Tommy now much older, seemingly carrying out Jason's murderous impulses in a story that's attempting to be a psychological horror thriller, but fail miserably. Not that the prior films showed restraint when it came to nudity, but this film was pretty gratuitous in it's overuse of sex and nudity for no really purpose. And although this film probably has the highest body count of any of the films thus far, the killings are not particularly interesting or clever. One star for a kind of interesting opening prologue, but this film is clearly the worst of the series.