FRIDAY THE 13TH’s Jason Voorhees Returns After 16 Years! Watch SWEET REVENGE Here
Fans have waited over 15 years for a new Friday the 13th movie. Silent Night Deadly Night director Mike P. Nelson has answered our prayers by resurrecting Jason Voorhees with the help of Angry Orchard Hard Cider. Nelson’s short vignette Sweet Revenge drops today and marks the first official return of our beloved hockey masked killer in over a decade.
Dubbed the centerpiece of Friday the 13th‘s 45th anniversary campaign, Sweet Revenge is presented by Angry Orchard Hard Cider, which is sponsoring the vignette as part of a larger collaboration with the franchise. Fans have been active in the video’s YouTube live chat all day, anxiously counting down and sharing fan theories. But now, the wait is finally over, and you can watch the full vignette right here.
JASON VOORHEES IS BACK, BABY!
We sat down with Nelson and Sweet Revenge star Ally Ioannides (Into the Badlands) for a spoiler filled chat on everything you just watched above. You’ve been warned, proceed with caution, all spoilers ahead.
As a lifelong Voorhees fan, Nelson packs a hell of a punch into the barely double digit minute runtime. Franchise fans will appreciate some gnarly kills and the familiar tableau of Jason’s victims. “He’s an artist!” Nelson muses. “He's a very gruesome artist with his tableaus. He leaves the bodies in a way that makes it even more horrific sometimes than the actual kills themselves, which to me was always so much fun.”
Partnering with both Jason Un1v3rse from Horror Inc and Angry Orchard really only came with two main guidelines, according to Nelson, “Jason Un1v3rse was very much like, ‘Look, this is Jason. Just don't hold back. We want this to feel like Jason, so we're not looking for you to take it into absolutely trashy, disgusting territory.’ The thing that I think we found in common was that we all understood what Friday the 13th was. There are lots of gnarly kills in the franchise, but there's a surprising amount of restraint in those movies, as brutal as they are.” The only other real guideline before unleashing Nelson into the woods had to do with a forbidden murder weapon: “We couldn't kill Jason with an Angry Orchard bottle.” Fair enough.
Speaking of gnarly kills, that gruesome boat propeller to the head may seem pretty straightforward enough, but Nelson shared that pulling that off safely involved lots of moving pieces. On top of creating a prop that ran safely, “You had to have the head filled with basically red soup. We took the leftover strawberry shortcake from lunch and jammed a bunch in there with fake blood so there were more chunks. Ryan Schaddelee and Beki Ingram had pieces of old skull that they had that they laid in and we basically just took parts of latex faces that they had because we didn't actually have a latex head. Hey, full disclosure, we had a budget for this, we didn't have a budget for everything!” Nelson laughs before continuing.
“We had to be crafty. Ryan and Beki basically built this prosthetic face from pieces of faces they had, and they kind of tied it together and filled it with this stuff. When the propeller hits it, it just kind of [explodes]. The harder chunks of the skull inside then got thrown across the floor just to kind of add to it.”
Really selling that gruesome effect came from good coverage, “We shot it from behind, out of focus, with the girls screaming at it. We shot three angles — the first initial one where you see the strikes on his face, which was kind of like a heal and reveal thing, and then it was people reacting, then behind it, where it's starting to turn into soup, you just see blood flying everywhere. Then you get the money shot, which is literally the blade chopping up guts, the top of the skull flies off to the side, and you see the little dangle of ear hanging off.”
And that’s how you map out a strawberry shortcake-infused on-screen melee.
When it comes to Eve’s sweet revenge, Nelson cites it as his favorite kill in the mix. “I think you're expecting Jason to go in and do some pretty heavy shit, some pretty awesome kills, and I think that's where the boat motor really comes into play. But honestly, the one that still gets me every time is when Eve picks up a kitchen knife and just sticks it right through her friend's face, and it goes through the back. It's just so satisfying because the badass final girl got her swings in on Jason, and she gets to kill the girl that screwed her over. Amazing. It's like a double punch!”
As Eve takes sweet revenge into her own machete-grasping hands, what does this mean for the future of the franchise? “I have ideas. Let's put it that way.” Nelson teases. “Giving Jason another character who's not necessarily just an enemy. In Freddy vs. Jason, it’s two iconic horror villains in a head-to-head, boxing match. I think what's interesting is that Jason has this arc in this. He was dealt a really shitty hand. He drowned because people weren't paying attention. His mom gets killed because she's angry about his death, and then he finds out that his mom gets killed, so he comes back for revenge from the dead or however Crystal Lake does that shit. Now we sort of dove into that mythology with Eve. Why can people be brought back? Is it because of vengeance? It's because of something in the lake? I don't like knowing necessarily, but just playing with the mythology.”
Ioannides is open to all the different paths Eve’s future might entail, “There are so many possibilities. For Eve, this is the very beginning of her transformation, and there are a lot of questions about her transformation. Is she fully as mute and instinctual as Jason? We don't know how this transformation looks on her because she came out of the lake, and then it was just nonstop. One trauma after the other. She hasn't really had a second to fully realize what's happened. I would be so curious to see how her story continues. There's definitely a lot there.”
“There's much to play with there in terms of characters that could be a lot of fun.” Nelson agrees, before giving us some more potential questions to chew on. “Do they both stand up for each other? Does he help her? Does she help him at some point? Do they end up duking it out and realize that this is futile?”
We all agree that the most exciting prospect is more Friday the 13th and the potential to see Jason Voorhees back on the big screen. As Ioannides puts it, “I want to go to a theater and see a Friday the 13th movie. I think they've started off this new era really well because obviously, Mike is the biggest fan. He loves it so much. Bringing back IP and doing sequels and remakes, I think they can be really, really good. There's a place for them if the person making it genuinely loves it, I hope that we see lots more of that. Obviously I hope that Mike and I are a part of it, but I hope in general that the people making this are fans of it because that's when it's good.”
None of this is lost on Nelosn, a lifelong fan. “With so many of these opportunities that I've gotten over the years now, most of them I never expected, and they did come out of just passion for a project that I was working on, or interest in a script. Growing up, I made a whole lot of these Jason Friday the 13th slasher rip-offs with friends and a video camera, in the backyard, up at the cabin. For this to come full circle and actually be able to play in the real sandbox with all the real toys and the machetes and the boat motors and the mask, that to me is next level. It's mind blowing. I don't take a bit of it for granted because I know how special this is.”
Sweet Revenge is written and directed by Mike P. Nelson. Starring Ally Ioannides, Natassia Wakey, Toussaint Morrison, Tim James White, and Chris Carlson. Schuyler White steps behind the mask to bring Jason Voorhees back to our screens. Produced by Chad Villella, presented by Jason Universe, sponsored by Angry Orchard.
Hungry for more Friday the 13th? Check out When Did Jason Voorhees Become Undead
