Reviews
[Review] ‘Friday the 13th: Ultimate Slasher Edition’ Unleashes Jason on Switch
Friday the 13th: The Game comes to the Nintendo Switch with the Ultimate Slasher Edition effectively seeing the game in its Jason X form. Still somewhat ragged, but a far more complete package than the decaying, yet seemingly unstoppable, hulk we’d seen previously.
When I reviewed the original launch version of Friday the 13th for another site, I came in with high hopes for something that captured the things I love about the iconic slasher series, and in many ways, it did a fine job of that. For a start, it brought so many of the great locations, characters, and Jasons to life, complete with the musical score that almost immediately comes into your head when someone so much as mentions Jason Voorhees. Best of all, the 1v7 asymmetric multiplayer setup of it is by far the best idea for a slasher series being made into a game. Playing as Jason is powerful and exciting. Playing as the counselors with a group of friends though? That’s where the true slasher magic is.
Of course, things didn’t go all that smoothly. All manner of technical issues plagued the game at launch, putting developer Illfonic on the back foot. Then, just as these hiccups had been brought back to a more manageable level, the whole licensing fiasco threw a harpoon through the game’s guts.
In typical Jason fashion though, the game managed to rise again, grow and evolve into something more, which brings us to the Nintendo Switch’s Ultimate Slasher Edition, which collects the game and all its improvements and additions into a new and portable form. Now you and Jason can take Manhattan, Brooklyn, Paris, and even Hull as you slay teenagers/escape an undead killer on the go.
The big thing to get out of the way is that yes, this is a technically deficient version of Friday the 13th, which hasn’t exactly in the best shape, to begin with. the camp counsellor’s can look very waxy, especially in cutscenes, and there’s a clunkiness to player movement that seems far more noticeable here than in previous console versions. It’s fair to say the former is less of a problem when playing in handheld mode at least, but the slight awkwardness of the controls causes some unfortunate moments of frustration both when hunting and escaping.
Otherwise, it’s fairly smooth sailing. The base game works as well as it ever has. One player plays as one of several iterations of Jason Voorhees, out to cull the boys and girls of summer en masse, and a bunch of other players are the camp counselors, out to not end up as another notch on Jason’s murder bedpost. It’s not a simple chase however, as both sides have their own strengths and weaknesses to try and tip events in their favor.
Each Jason (Friday the 13th features a host of Voorhees’ looks from over the years, including his sack-headed debut appearance and his purple-hued look from a Friday game of yesteryear) has his own starting set of skills and weaponry, with context and special kills that can be unlocked and added to give your killing spree a touch of gruesome flair. Jason’s base skills take time to recharge after use, and includes Morph, which allows Voorhees to instantly teleport to another spot on the map, which is a delightfully meta nod to slasher villains and their uncanny ability to just appear out of nowhere. Another gives Jason a kind of temporary heat vision allowing him to see potential victims nearby and to know if they’re inside or outside a building, while there’s also a fast zoom to catch up with fleeing camp counselors and a short-term stealth hunting ability. Once Jason gets ahold of a counselor, he can select one of his personal killing methods and hopefully off them and move on to the next.
The other side of that is the counsellers themselves, who are largely helpless against the hulking slab of undead terror, but can buy short reprieves against him through sheer wit and cunning…and sometimes baseball bats. As previously mentioned, if Jason gets ahold of a camp counselor, it’s likely to be curtains but, there’s a small chance of escape, especially when healthy, and that is amplified anytime they get themselves a knife (which are littered around the place for anyone to use). With a knife driven into Jason’s neck, you can get out of his death grip and scramble to relative safety. You can of course just not get caught or have something meatier to hand to knock back the colossal lunk before he gets you, but that’s clearly not always going to be an option, is it?
As with Jason, each counselor has particular skill levels and abilities that help or hinder their ultimate goal, but unlike Jason, these are largely about defense rather than attack. Counselor’s can escape a number of ways, including fixing up broken down cars and boarding boats, but to do that requires items, and they are spread across the maps, where Jason is more than likely going to cross their path. You could go fast, but Jason will hear you and be able to locate you far easier.
This is the core of what makes Friday the 13th work, the risk and reward the counselors must choose between, and the frightening power of Jason to seek out the smallest hint of their location. When the flashpoint of Jason’s arrival occurs, you can hide under beds, dive through windows, and lock doors, but the knowledge is there that he will more than likely find you, and it will not end well for those playing as counselors. On the flipside, actually forming some kind of strategy and escaping is such a joyous occasion because even a really cack-handed Jason has the potential to off at least one of you, so it feels earned to get away from him relatively unscathed.
Even when Friday the 13th was deeply troubled by technical issues, this dynamic was the key selling point, and arguably why it has withstood multiple obstacles. Dead By Daylight may have had a bit more polish and variety, as well as a more historically stable set of servers (they do seem fine so far for F13 on Switch, but that’s with relatively few people at organized times) but with Friday the 13th, it feels far more like a cohesive slasher game by being all about the world of Mrs. Voorhees’ Baby Boy.
That has been further bolstered by extras that don’t require an online connection to enjoy, an essential thing for the Switch. Offline play is a great way to tune up your machete-wielding skills without the Wi-Fi, and a virtual tour of a cabin filled with a good amount Friday the 13th trivia is a nice touch, but the most fun you can have offline is the challenges. These put you in Hitman-esque scenarios where Jason has to kill hapless teens in specific ways and not get seen, or allow them to escape. The first one has you killing a guy while he takes a leak, so you can imagine the kind of things you will be getting up to. It’s a fun way to celebrate Jason’s varied and entertaining killing methods.
Throw in a slew of good and goofy unlockables, from alternate skins to emotes to different versions of Jason, and you have a fairly healthy package for Friday the 13th fans. Even with the restrictions Illfonic has had to endure regarding the license, it has still made great use of it. The core game may be a tad clunky at times, and not much of a looker, but the love for Friday the 13th can be felt from the title screen onwards.
Friday the 13th: Ultimate Slasher Edition review code provided by the publisher.
Friday the 13th: Ultimate Slasher Edition is out August 13 on Nintendo Switch, and is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
There’s something really insidious, in a great way, about setting a horror story in a movie theater. It’s something filmmakers have known for decades, going back to The Blob and beyond, but it never fails to strike a chord because, in a way, it hits us exactly where we feel safest. Seeing a horror movie on the big screen, surrounded by like-minded moviegoers, is a communal experience, one in which everyone screams and laughs together. We are together, and therefore we are much less vulnerable, so when someone punctures that bubble of safety, it’s all the more frightening.
Matinee (also released as Midnight Matinee in some territories) is a movie that understands this from the jump, setting up a stunning opening kill that predates a similar sequence in Scream 2 by almost a full decade. A smart, layered, very stylish Canadian slasher released at the tail end of the 1980s, it’s one of those films that’s spent a lot of time in the dark even among the horror faithful (I’m willing to admit that I hadn’t seen it until recently). Now, a new Kino Cult Blu-ray release is out to change that, and it reveals a slasher essential that, while not perfect, has charm and style to spare.
Two years ago, the Paramount Theater in the small town of Halston closed its doors when, during the theater’s annual horror festival, a young moviegoer was murdered in his seat, mid-movie. Leads in the murder quickly dried up, and the case is cold enough now that the town barely talks about it anymore. Fortunately for local horror fans, that means the Paramount can open again in time for its Halloween horror festival, and they’ve got a hotshot producer (William B. Davis) in town for just such an occasion.
As the festival draws closer, the film introduces us to a variety of characters, including rebellious teenager Sherri (Beatrice Boepple), her boyfriend Lawrence (Jeff Schultz), her overbearing mother Marilyn (Gillian Barber), and the theater’s kindly owner, Earle (Don S. Davis), who’s just hoping he can run a business without more bloodshed. But someone clearly remembers what happened two years ago, and their violent streak is on a collision course with opening night.
Matinee has quite a few things going for it, but what stands out right away, and maintains a consistent grip right up through a wonderful crescendo in the third act, is the film’s visual style. Writer/Director Richard Martin, cinematographer Cyrus Block, and special effects wizard Bob Comer make great use of the film’s limited locations, giving the movie a charming small-town feel reminiscent of Halloween or The Blob while building a self-contained little world inside the theater itself that’ll remind you of films like Popcorn and Demons.
The colors are striking, the framing is clever, and the film clearly has a ball making references to all kinds of other horror cinema moments ranging from The Phantom of the Opera to Friday the 13th. The kills, while relatively sparing with gore, are delivered with style and appropriate tension, creating that sense of unease right in the middle of a place where we as movie fans should be comfortable: The movie theater. Along the way, the Paramount itself becomes a character, and this release definitely dials up its retro splendor.
The Blu-ray upgrade preserves the film’s attention to detail and ambitious cinematography, helping the colors to pop while never letting go of the texture and feel of a relatively low-budget horror film made in Canada in the 1980s. There’s a certain gauziness to many exploitation films of this era, that haloed light you get when the scene is perhaps overexposed just a little too much. It makes the film dreamlike even when it reaches for realism, and Kino Cult’s upgrade preserves that feeling. Throw in a smart script and a whodunit plot that leans heavily into the psychological details of each character, and you’ve got a winner.
There are a couple of things that stick out as slight issues here, including the lack of special features beyond an excellent commentary from film historians and Kino regulars Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe. The disc is quite reasonably priced, so it’s not a letdown economically speaking, but I’d love a deeper dive into the film and the Canadian slasher boom in general, particularly for a movie like this that seems to have faded from so many memories, including mine. The sound mix also has some issues, probably left over from previous releases, that might have you playing with your volume settings a little more than you’d like over the course of a 90-minute film, particularly when lines of ADR dialogue crop up.
These are minor concerns, though, and they do nothing to diminish the impact of Matinee, or the joy that’ll come from watching this film for the first time if you’re a slasher devotee in search of something new, or even someone who saw this movie way back when hoping to relive its glories. This is one of those slashers I’ll be talking about with fellow horrorphiles for a long time, and it’s because of this disc.
Matinee is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Cult.
You must be logged in to post a comment.