Reviews
‘Sweet Revenge’ – Jason’s Return Vignette Is Better Than You Might Have Expected [Review]
The last time Jason Voorhees graced the screen, Barack Obama had just taken office as president, Michael Jackson was still alive, and Scream and Evil Dead were only trilogies.
A lot has changed since 2009, but the demand for a new Friday the 13th movie has only grown more fervent over the past 16 years. At long last, the man behind the mask is back… with an asterisk.
The horror icon returns in Sweet Revenge, a short film from Jason Universe — the recently launched multi-platform expansion of the Friday the 13th franchise spearheaded by rights holders Horror Inc. — produced in conjunction with Angry Orchard.
It’s no surprise that the initial announcement was met with skepticism, as the vignette could have been little more than a cynical cash grab. With a 15-minute runtime, however, the project is more substantial than the glorified commercial many feared it would be, and the hard cider’s integration is no more egregious than your average movie product placement.
Paramount to Sweet Revenge‘s success is the filmmaker at the helm. Writer-director Mike P. Nelson — who previously rebooted Wrong Turn in a refreshing way, did some of the most interesting work in V/H/S/85, and has a remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night coming later this year — drew from a lifetime of slasher fandom to deliver a love letter to Friday the 13th.
Reminiscent of the prologue to 2009’s Friday the 13th reboot, Sweet Revenge streamlines the summer camp slasher formula into a fast-paced vignette that leaves you wanting more. A group of friends — Eve (Ally Ioannides, “Into the Badlands”), Dana (Natassia Wakey), Kyle (Toussaint Morrison, V/H/S/85), and Troy (Tim James White) — rent a cabin in the woods by Crystal Lake, and it’s not long before Jason strikes.
Nelson doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, but the fresh spin he adds to the lore has the potential to reinvigorate the franchise moving forward. Although there are some Easter eggs sprinkled throughout, he doesn’t waste time on cheap fan service. Instead, the production is imbued with the spirit of a vintage Friday movie that feels more organic than the many fan films that have attempted to fill the void in recent years.
Production values are strong throughout. Shot by Nelson’s regular cinematographer Nick Junkersfeld (Wrong Turn, V/H/S/85), even the lighting evokes the 1980s Friday installments, where you can actually see what’s happening at night in the pale blue moonlight. Composers Matthew Compton (Palm Springs, The Last Stop in Yuma County) and Michelangelo Rodriguez fully embrace the textured orchestral scores of Harry Manfredini.
Presented as something of an urban legend, with the area’s troubled past alluded to without any specifics, Jason is played with urgency by stunt coordinator Schuyler White (who previously portrayed a masked killer in Haunt). Not unlike Derek Mears‘ menacing take on the character from 2009, this version of Jason harkens back to his early appearances as a lean killing machine rather than a hulking, undead monster.
In addition to his trusty machete, Jason’s signature inventiveness with weaponry is on display with the likes of an outboard motor and an apple corer. The kills are, gleefully, accomplished with practical special effects courtesy of Ryan Schaddelee (Wrong Turn, I Am Not a Serial Killer) and Beki Ingram (Tusk, The Strangers: Prey at Night).
Jason’s new mask, designed in part by special effects legend Greg Nicotero (whose KNB EFX Group worked on Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), has been condemned by fans since its reveal. While criticisms like eye holes being too square and a top chevron resembling a unibrow may seem petty to casual viewers, they’re validated by 45 years of history in which hardcore fans have invested.
I don’t place a great deal of importance on the look — this is coming from a guy who loves Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers despite its bastardization of another of horror’s other most iconic props — but Jason’s new mask looks leaps and bounds better in action with cinematic lighting.
If you’re able to set aside your preconceived notions, Sweet Revenge is a promising step in the right direction that should restore any lost faith in the franchise. Beyond tiding viewers over until Peacock’s “Crystal Lake” prequel series, the vignette begs for expansion. With Sweet Revenge as his calling card, Nelson is a strong contender to helm Jason’s long-awaited return to the big screen.
Chuck Tingle‘s writing is embedded with a particular tonal trick that makes him perfectly suited to horror. “Propulsive” is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Tingle’s energetic prose, and when his books start wrapping themselves around characters and digging through their various complexities, it’s easy to be pulled along, absorbed in the feeling that an old friend is simply telling you a story.
Then Tingle will drop one of the single creepiest bits of imagery you’ve ever read, and you’re right back in the horror space. It’s not always a jump scare, but it is always a pulsing feeling of dread that keeps you hooked through the rest of the book.
Fabulous Bodies, Tingle’s latest horror novel, carries on these gifts, and the promise Tingle showed on books like Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays. His fiction’s growing ever more confident and precise, and his eye for horrific detail hasn’t dimmed in the least, making this a summer reading delight for horror fans.
Poppy is a single mother determined to make a better life for her daughter, particularly after growing up in group homes and foster systems. By day, she works hard to keep up the flow of upbeat, enthusiastic content as a fashion influencer, and while that’s going well, it’s not yet making ends meet. To make up the difference, she moonlights as a grave robber, lifting bodies from morgues and funeral homes and selling their pieces on the black market. It’s grueling, dangerous work, and it’s about to pay off big. Out of the blue, Poppy gets a call to transport the newly dead body of her musical hero, the legendary Eddie Michaels. It’s a weird gig, but the payout is big enough that she could walk away from her macabre side gig forever. Poppy takes the job, and things get complicated when Eddie turns out to be, well, only mostly dead.
From the moment Eddie’s corpse enters the picture, Fabulous Bodies takes on the vibe of a road novel, as the grave robber and the undead rock star make stop after stop, and Poppy tries again and again to wrap her mind about what she’s gotten herself into, and how she might get herself out. It’s a delightful premise, and Tingle never loses his grip on the fun of it. No matter how dark the novel gets, and it does get quite dark, the narrative keeps barreling forward, delivering macabre laughs and moments of beautifully gruesome invention along the way.
Because he’s set his protagonist up as a fashion influencer, Tingle has lots of room to play in the space of how we view human bodies, both alive and dead, how we use them, and what we value in them. This is the emotional core of Fabulous Bodies, and while it’s sometimes overshadowed by the runaway train of the plot, it remains a potent source of thematic exploration throughout the book, and it gets more complicated when you consider certain gifts Eddie’s been granted in his strange supernatural state.
In essence, we’re looking at a story about a grave robber who discovers a body that not only fights back, but takes control of any given situation. That throws Poppy for repeated loops and keeps the plot moving, but it also makes us consider on a deeper level exactly what we value about our own physical form, and what might happen when we lose our grip on it entirely.
The book’s themes and emotional concerns hum through the whole narrative, but the overwhelming impression I got while reading Fabulous Bodies was just how much damn fun this book is. I couldn’t stop reading it, not just because it’s so filled with sudden swerves and ghoulish setpieces, but because Tingle has honed his horror storytelling down to a fine, very sharp point. Fabulous Bodies moves like a roller coaster, complete with a tension-filled ramp-up and a finale that’ll leave you breathless by the time the ride is over.
If you haven’t been reading Chuck Tingle’s horror work up to this point, it’s time to get on board, because he’s just getting started, and he’s already mastered the art of the scary page-turner.
Fabulous Bodies is available now.
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