My apologies for this taking a bit. It’s been kind of strange during this time of the Coronavirus and patterns inevitably become disrupted. I finally found time to get some writing done for Haunted MTL (which I love doing, but this has not been a very productive month for me). Hopefully, you’ve already read the three prior outlines in this Friday the 13th reboot miniseries proposal. If you have not, I suggest you stop here and check them out: Chapter One: Camp Crystal Lake, Chapter Two: The Woman in the Woods, Chapter Three: The Crystal Lake Massacre.
I will outline the final chapter here, as well as a little writing about the choices I made in this reboot.
Let’s dive into Friday the 13th, Chapter Four: Camp Blood Forever.
Friday the 13th, Chapter Four: Camp Blood Forever
The episode begins with two counselors late at night enjoying the last dying embers of a fire. They were left behind to keep an eye on the kids while the rest of the counselors were out searching for the unfortunate victims of the previous episode. They’re somewhat nervous about what is going on, but they’re talking tough to psych themselves up.
Then Alice comes stumbling out of the woods, screaming and bloodied. Alice arrives at the camp in a panic and begins rousing counselors to evacuate the kids. The two counselors are confused and call Eddie Jarvis, who is already on his way. The counselors manage to hold off Alice from disturbing the kids who are sleeping until Eddie arrives and tries to defuse the situation.
Eddie has arrived with one of the Crystal Lake deputies. The deputy asks for Alice to make a report and Alice lets them have it. She talks about the dead counselors, Sheriff Savini, Ms. Voorhees, and the approaching Jason. Eddie and the deputy aren’t sure how to react.
Back in the woods, we watch as Jason makes his way toward the camp. He is sticking close enough to the road for a deputy to see him. The deputy pulls over and loses track of the gigantic Jason, only for Jason to almost supernaturally show up behind him and smash his face into a tree. Jason watches the body drop, stares at it for a moment, and pushes forward.
The deputy at camp makes a call to the others and finds out about the death of Savini, Cunningham, and Hodder as well as the dead Ms. Voorhees and the child from Crystal Lake. He asks for everyone to regroup at camp as something is on the way, believing Alice about Jason. Most of the counselors are still missing, so Eddie, Alice, and the remaining support staff start securing the kids and get ready to put them on the bus to leave camp.
It’s too late, however, as Jason has already arrived. Alice heads to one cabin to secure the kids, narrowly missing Jason who is heading another direction, not noticing her. Jason smashes into a counselor cabin and attacks one of the counselors who tries to defend himself with a hockey stick. Jason grabs the stick, snapping it, and repeatedly stabs the counselor with the broken end.
Eddie enters the cabin trying to see what the holdup is and is pinned to a wall by Jason’s ax. Eddie’s wild death motions knock down stuff off a shelf. Jason rips Eddie from the wall and kills him by crushing his eye sockets. Jason looks at his handiwork and lifts the sweater sleeve he is wearing as mask enough to eat some of Eddie’s blood.
He spies on a hockey mask on the floor and looks at it curiously.
Meanwhile, Alice is in the girls’ cabin getting them to pack up what they can into their bags. The deputy knocks, he tells her to get them to the bus. She gathers them and heads out the door. Screaming grabs her and the deputy’s attention and they see a group of boys fleeing a cabin. The deputy heads that direction and urges the kids to follow Alice.
Alice leads the kids to the bus but the driver is already dead. She tells them to get into the mess hall and hide. She manages to secure the building and has the kids hiding under the tables. She runs off to the kitchen and grabs the biggest knife she can find.
She crouches on the floor next to a group of kids but the sounds of screaming outside of the mess hall pierce the silence. Alice peeks over a table only to see the deputy’s body come crashing through a window. She begins to move toward it, but Jason steps into the frame and he is wearing the hockey mask.
Alice dives back out of sight and Jason peers into the darkened building, unable to see anything. He lifts his tremendous bulk through the frame and broke glass and begins walking around the mess in the dark. Alice gestures to the children to remain silent. Alice creeps around, hiding just out of sight as Jason wanders between the rows of tables and chairs. A child begins to whimper and Jason pauses. He looks around.
Alice quickly stands up and bolts for the window, shouting for Jason. He begins following her as she climbs out the window. She is out of the building when one of the kids accidentally scuffs a chair across the floor. Jason turns his attention back to the mess hall.
Alice realizes Jason isn’t following, so she climbs back into the window and sees that Jason has turned over one of the tables and is approaching a pair of cowering children. She screams and berserker-rushes him, jamming her knife deep into his back. He stumbles backward on top of her and she struggles to escape his weight as she screams for the children to run for a cabin and lock it. The kids unlock the mess hall door and stream out, screaming.
Alice manages to worm her way out from under Jason’s body and nearly escapes until his tremendous hand grabs her ankle and crushes it. Alice screams and kicks at his fingers. He finally lets go and a hobbled Alice limps out the door. Jason rises to his feet, snapping the knife out of his back.
Alice tumbles into the dirt in the common area and can barely walk. She doesn’t see the kids. She tries to put distance between herself and the mess hall, but it is virtually impossible. Jason stumbles out of the building and his masked face looks at her direction. He begins a slow walk toward her and pauses at a memorial pole in the common area; a wooden beam with a couple of placards. He rips it from the ground and approaches Alice.
Three cars come screeching into the camp area and six deputies draw their guns on Jason, who doesn’t seem to notice or care. He just wants Alice. They tell him to stop and drop the weapon, but he keeps walking toward the crawling woman. They open fire. Jason’s body is rocked by a hail of bullets and after a couple dozen shots he finally falls to the ground. Alice, unsure, keeps crawling as one of the deputies runs over to secure her. The others approach the apparently lifeless body of Jason Voorhees.
Jason, not dead, nor alive, really, snaps up and grabs a deputy’s leg, digging dirty, thick fingers deep into his thigh and dropping him. Jason begins to rise to his feet and any attempts by the deputies to bring him down simply results in their deaths. Alice screams as Jason approaches. The deputy next to her attempts to help her up and take her toward a car. Jason is gaining, however, so he tries to unload a clip into him. Jason simply grabs the gun and shoves it through the deputy’s skull.
Alice limps into the car and manages to drive it into Jason, who holds onto it, rather than simply bouncing off the hood. Alice screams and drives Jason and herself into one of the cabins. The crash is spectacular and Jason appears to be crushed between stone, tinder, and a car. Smoke is spilling from the car.
Alice blacks out.
She wakes up in a hospital surrounded by state police. They ask her what she remembers. She tells them the story and she asks if they found Jason, but they reveal there was no sign of him. They also reveal that the cabin she crashed into was where the children were hiding and that they are dead or missing.
About three years later we see Alice is in a mental hospital. She looks terrible and she is sitting across from an attorney who informs her that at this point all her appeals have failed. Her attorney leaves and she is taken to the activity room where she gets back to an art project… a paper mache hockey mask. She stares at it a moment and tears it in half, scowling.
Back at Crystal Lake, a young Tommy Jarvis, about 12 or 13 now, wanders around the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake. He enters the cabin where his father died. His memorializing is cut short by a van arriving at the campgrounds. He watches, hidden, in the cabin as a new group of people spill out of the van. They begin talking about what they could do with all of this land. Perhaps a resort?
Tommy slips out of the cabin as they approach and watches from around a corner. The camera pulls back in a long take as he listens to them. Further back now, the camera is in the woods. It gets darker.
The infamous Jason Voorhees riff plays.
The end.
Reasoning
So why did I go with the route I went? As I mentioned in my first post in this series, I do love Friday the 13th, but it is a nonsensical series. It was never really planned out and the fact that Jason doesn’t become a thing until the second movie just strikes me as bonkers. I feel that the series was ultimately successful in spite of itself because it delivered boobs, gore, and a great, imposing killer from the 3rd film on.
So, when I thought about how I would want to reboot the series, I had a couple of things I wanted to make sure I did:
- Have Pamela and Jason in the same story
- Bring in the hockey mask
- Establish Jason as supernatural right away
- Give Jason a reason to kill beyond simple vengeance or territoriality
- Actually kill some damn kids
Ultimately, I think I was successful in these regards, but your mileage may vary. I’d love to know what you thought of this series. My proposal is a mini-series for cable television, 4 episodes at around an hour and a half to two hours each. Would this be something you would watch? Does it respect the established series enough?
Eventually I would like to take this outline that was spread across four posts, pull them together, and edit them. I recognize there are elements I can probably establish earlier on and set up for later. That’s the challenge of writing these things piece by piece.
Anyway, have at me, folks. Let me know your thoughts and if you’d like for me to reboot any other horror classics.
