I'll be perfectly frank here. Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning is the least satisfactory of the series. This is not to say that it's a bad film, nor that it doesn't have some great moments. In fact, it does. On its own, it works well enough, but when set into the Friday the 13th canon, it strays too far from the backstory. The opening is competent enough. Young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), dressed in raincoat and galoshes, makes his way along a forest trail during a rainstorm and comes upon a recent grave, the headstone of which reads "Jason Voorhees." Okay, so we're obviously watching a dream sequence here. No problem. And look--here come two college-aged lunks with shovels. Tommy ducks and hides behind a hedge while the lunks open the grave and are greeted by a still-alive Jason, who dispatches both and then turns his attention to his would-be earlier assailant, Tommy. Jason's machete blade swings down at Tommy and.... A years-older Tommy Jarvis (now played by John Shepherd) awakens in the back seat of a vehicle driving him to Pinehurst, a halfway house for troubled teens. Did I mention that the opening credits roll somewhere hereabout? Well, they do. Anyway, after the "Directed by Danny Steinmann" one fades away, we're with Tommy at Pinehurst, as the instantly-recognizable heroine Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman) comes on scene and escorts him to his room. From here, things go awry. One "guest" (or is it "patient"....the script won't distinguish) at the halfway house murders another with an axe. Shortly after his arrest, more murders start up, chiefly surrounding the halfway house residents. And here's the "spoiler" for this write-up: the hockey-masked killer turns out to be an ambulance driver named Roy Burns (Dick Wieand); the axe-murder victim at Pinehurt was his long-lost son, so the man has now become unhinged. And the whole hockey mask thing? Roy had been familiar with the Voorhees case and had assumed Jason's identity to cover for his crimes. You get the picture. To his credit, director Danny Steinmann injects a bit of dark humor into the work, and the "who-done-it" aspect is intriguing on first-viewing-only experience. But otherwise, his movie suffers too much from a "Lack O' Voorhees" problem. There is no backstory for Jason or his mother, and no hint at resolution to the mythology suggested by previous installments. What we get here is a decently-made slasher film with characters we'd be happy to forget after it's over. That's it. Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginnging is by no means a bad film. It's just disappointing, considering what it could have been. But it is an entertaining watch, even after multiple viewings. If this is the weakest of the series, then the series has little to worry about. Especially after Tom McLoughlin came along next year to unveil the hands-down superior Jason Lives. Read on. Principle Credits: Starring Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Marco St. John, Dick Wieand, Corey Feldman, Debbisue Voorhees, and Tiffany Helms. Directed by Danny Steinmann Produced by Frank Mancuso, Jr. Written by David Cohen Music by Harry Manfredini Special Make-Up Effects by David White << Back