Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

191
inside the eye hole can be seen a dock on Crystal Lake, which eventually fills the
frame. Here, director Ronnie Yu exploits the aesthetic conventions of the slasher
film, using expressionistic lighting, mostly dark, with predominately blue moonlight
and small splashes of white light coming from the lamps overhanging the dock. A
young woman is standing on the dock, about to get undressed, and turns around
when she hears a noise. Thinking it is somebody named Mike, she turns around and
teases him by opening her shirt, and baring her breasts. When nobody responds, she
fully undresses, and goes for a swim. Becoming nervous, she returns to the dock and
starts to dress, when Jason begins to chase her through the forest, which is shrouded
in mist and fog. She backs against a tree to hide, and Jason suddenly appears,
running her through with a machete which also goes into the tree, and she dies stuck
in a standing position. The entire scene acts as an exaggeration of familiar tropes
from previous Friday the 13 th films, but presented in a more generic way than similar
sequences in Jason X, which tends to reference specific set pieces in the series. This
is followed by the girl morphing into various victims, claiming responsibility for not
watching the campers as discussed in Chapter 3. After this, a female voice is heard,
saying “Jason.” At this, Jason turns around, and his mother stands behind him and
says, “My special, special boy. Do you know what your gift is? No matter what
they do to you, you cannot die. You can never die. You’ve just been sleeping,
honey. But now, the time has come to wake up. Mommy has something she wants
you to do.” There is a cut to Jason’s decomposing body in the mud again, with his
heart still beating, indicating that the previous sequence was a fantasy. Jason’s
mother’s voice is still heard: “I need you to go to Elm Street. The children have
been very bad on Elm Street. Rise up, Jason! Your work isn’t finished!” There is
then a dissolve to Jason’s hockey mask, as his mother says, “Hear my voice and live