Movies
Jason Voorhees Went to Hell On This Day In 1993
Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the release of New Line Cinema’s 1993 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Adam Marcus’ awful, yet seminal sequel in the Friday the 13th franchise that set the stage for Freddy vs Jason.
While Jason Goes to Hell was an abomination of a sequel, it was a huge moment for horror fans as it was the first time that New Line publicly tipped their hat to the notion that Jason would eventually battle budding slasher Freddy Krueger on screen.
Jason Goes to Hell was the first Friday the 13th since the 1980 debut by Sean Cunningham that turned its focus away from Jason Voorhees (noting that the Jason in A New Beginning was a copycat murderer). The film has a jarring opening sequence in which a SWAT team blasts a hail of bullets into Jason, eventually blowing him to smithereens. It sets the stage for a Jason-less sequel that’s clearly one of the biggest mistakes in the history of horror cinema.
Yet, after putting fans through their own personal hell, the filmmakers shocked audiences with an epilogue for the ages. This is where A Nightmare On Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger makes a brief appearance. After Jason is pulled into the pits of Hell by a handful of demons, the camera zooms in on his infamous hockey mask… that’s when Freddy’s gloved hand comes bursting through, grabbing the mask, and pulling it down to Hell as well.
You see, in 1991 New Line Cinema released Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, which ended Freddy’s reign of terror and left him in the pits of Hell. That’s when they begun strategizing pitting Freddy against Jason, which would enter years of development hell.
Thanks partially to this on-screen tease, New Line remained committed to bringing the two slasher titans on screen together, only it would take a decade to bring into fruition. I say it was worth it, you?
Movies
‘Abigail’ on Track for a Better Opening Weekend Than Universal’s Previous Two Vampire Attempts
In the wake of Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man back in 2020, Universal has been struggling to achieve further box office success with their Universal Monsters brand. Even in the early days of the pandemic, Invisible Man scared up $144 million at the worldwide box office, while last year’s Universal Monsters: Dracula movies The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield didn’t even approach that number when you COMBINE their individual box office hauls.
The horror-comedy Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with just $26 million. The period piece Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21 million.
But Universal is trying again with their ballerina vampire movie Abigail this weekend, the latest bloodbath directed by the filmmakers known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream).
Unlike Demeter and Renfield, the early reviews for Abigail are incredibly strong, with our own Meagan Navarro calling the film “savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore,” ultimately “offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.” Read her full review here.
That early buzz – coupled with some excellent trailers – should drive Abigail to moderate box office success, the film already scaring up $1 million in Thursday previews last night. Variety notes that Abigail is currently on track to enjoy a $12 million – $15 million opening weekend, which would smash Renfield ($8 million) and Demeter’s ($6 million) opening weekends.
Working to Abigail‘s advantage is the film’s reported $28 million production budget, making it a more affordable box office bet for Universal than the two aforementioned movies.
Stay tuned for more box office reporting in the coming days.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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