"Jason's Back, and this is the one you've been screaming for."
— Tagline
The fourth film in the Friday the 13th film franchise, released in 1984.
The film starts right after the events of Part III, with Higgins Haven crawling with police and paramedics. The bodies are taken to the morgue, Not Quite Dead Jason Voorhees among them. As soon as he's put into the cold, he springs back to action. With the killing spree continuing, he starts targeting an area near the Crystal Lake where the Jarvis family lives, with a group of teens also present to provide some cannon fodder.
As per the title, the film was supposed to be the Grand Finale to the series. But less than a year later, another sequel was released.
This film has examples of:
- Autopsy Snack Time: Axel is introduced to us by having him munching on a sandwich, which he then places on Jason's body when he is wheeled in.
- Axe Before Entering: Jason enters the Jarvis house by slamming right through the front door. Following that, Trish and Tommy try to take refuge in Tommy's room, but then Jason starts axing before entering.
- Badass Boast: Trish gives Jason one before cutting him deep.Trish: You son of a bitch! I'm gonna give you something to remember us by!
- Big "NO!": Nurse Morgan gives one when she is about to be killed.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jason is down for good(At least for now) but he's still killed all but two of the main cast members, and Tommy is severely messed up as a result of brutally killing him.
- Captain Obvious: "He's killing me!"
- Car Cushion: Jason pulls Tina through a second-story window and throws her onto a car on the ground.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Axel lets out one when Jason's hand falls from the table in the morgue, and scares the crap out of him and nurse Morgan.Axel: Jesus Christmas! Holy Jesus goddamn! Holy Jesus jumping Christmas shit!
- Continuity Nod: The paper clippings that Rob has on Jason's misdeeds reference events from past films. Rob himself is the brother of Sandra from Part 2.
- Cut Phone Lines: Jason cuts the Jarvis house's phone line (by pulling the box off the outside wall) when Trish tries to call for help.
- Dangerous Windows: Jason attacks Tina through a window and later tries to do the same to Tommy.
- Darker and Edgier: This is often considered to be the darkest entry in the series due to the intense tonal shift (especially compared to Part III), the dark atmosphere, and the intensity of some of its death scenes.
- David vs. Goliath: Tommy Jarvis vs. Jason Voorhees
- Decoy Protagonist: Rob looks to be the main male hero of the film to work alongside Final Girl Trish. Instead, he dies almost immediately after encountering Jason, with the real Final Guy of the film being Tommy.
- Destination Defenestration: Jason throws Rob's corpse through a window into the Jarvis house.
- Developing Doomed Characters: A well-done example, with many reviewers finding the cast likable.
- Does He Have a Brother?: When Paul and Co. pass an overweight hippie hitchhiker on their trip to Crystal Lake, Ted mockingly yells at her if she has a sister. She responds by flipping around her "Canada and Love" sign and showing them the other side which reads "FUCK YOU". And then she gives them the bird.
- Dramatic Unmask: Jason’s deteriorating face is revealed when Trish strikes him with a machete.
- The End... Or Is It?: The film ends with a suggestion that Tommy isn't all right in the head anymore.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Gordon, the Jarvis family's dog, gets an awesome case of Get The Fuck Out when it senses Jason's presence in the house that Trish and Rob are investigating.
- Extreme Mêlée Revenge: When Tommy kills Jason it seems it's all over and hugs Trish. However, when Jason tries to pull a Not Quite Dead, Tommy pushes Trish out of the way and continues to chop at Jason, Trish helplessly begging him to stop.Tommy: DIE!!! DIE!!!! DIE!!!!!
- Eye Scream: Jason is defeated as he gets his machete across his face and his left eye.
- Facepalm of Doom: Jason kills Doug by grabbing his face and crushing his skull.
- Filth: Ted finds very old-school skinflicks in the house he and his friends are staying at. It's the nearest thing to him getting any action that night.
- Final Girl: Trish. In a subversion, however, the sight of the unmasked Jason causes her to suffer a Heroic BSoD rather than motivating her to finish him off, leaving Tommy to do the deed instead.
- Finger-Twitching Revival: After Jason gets a machete through the eye, while Tommy and Trish are hugging, Jason's fingers begin to twitch. When Tommy sees this, he completely freaks out, grabs the machete, and starts chopping away at Jason's body to make sure he's dead.
- Foreshadowing: The poster shows the hockey mask with a knife on its left eye socket. Jason is defeated with a machete going through his left eye.
- Early in the film Tommy's mom tells him that he needs a haircut. Tommy ends up shaving his head in the climax.
- Tommy's tinkering with the car and other electronics was meant to be this. The original script called for him to turn the family microwave into some sort of ray gun and cause Jason's head to explode, a special effect at which Tom Savini excelled. The ending was rewritten when it was feared the "microwave of doom" could come off as too silly.
- Harpoon Gun: Jason impales Paul with one through his crotch. And as if that wasn't enough, he then pulls the trigger.
- Hostile Weather: Rain and thunder appear in the middle part of the film, disappear, and return as the climax approaches.
- Immediate Sequel: The film takes place only a day after the events of Part III, with the police cleaning up the mess of Jason's slaughter at Higgins Haven and bringing both him and a traumatized Chris Higgins to the hospital.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jason gets a machete in the eye. And falls all the way to the handle, making it impale its eye. He also kills Terri by impaling her with a wooden pole, which he then gets stuck with her body against the side of the house.
- Impaled Palm: Jimmy is pinned down with the corkscrew he was looking for, before getting a meat cleaver to his face.
- It's Personal: Sandra from Part 2 was Rob's sister, which is why he is hunting for Jason.
- Jerkass: Ted.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Ted is a jerkass, he does give Jimmy useful advice to get him laid. Too bad neither of them lasts long after.
- Killed Off for Real: That was the original intention for Jason, but
Executive Meddling saves the day. - Let's Split Up, Gang!: Trish and Rob split up to search the teenager's house when they know Jason is there. Trish goes upstairs, while Rob goes to the cellar.
- Machete Mayhem: Unlike the popular portrayal, Jason doesn't use one at all. Instead, it's used by Rob, and later by the Jarvis siblings.
- Mama Bear: Trish in spades. When Rob gets killed she runs, but when Jason grabs her little brother, she beats him mercilessly with a hammer and electrocutes him with a TV. Despite suffering a broken shoulder and completely exhausted from being chased by Jason, the minute she sees him again she grabs the machete and starts swinging.
- Modesty Towel: Sara puts a towel on in the shower, after having sex with Doug.
- Neck Lift: Jason lifts Nurse Morgan up against the wall before gutting her.
- Neck Snap: After slitting Axel's throat, Jason twists his neck around.
- Once is Not Enough: When Trish hits Jason on the head with a TV set, and as he lays on the ground, she doesn't pick up the thing again to smash his head in.
- Averted later with Tommy hacking Jason's corpse when he sees his fingers twitching.
- Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Trish runs into the corpses of Terri and Jimmy when she's running away from Jason. Bonus points for Jason taking the time to nail one of the corpses to a doorway.
- Previously on…: Likely due to thinking this would be the final movie in the series. Using the Ghost Story scene from the second movie to tie things together, major backstory events and deaths are recapped before showing Chris's final confrontation with Jason. Afterwards, we pick up at the farm with an ambulance crew loading up Jason's body for transport.
- Product Placement: The Zaxxon arcade game Tommy is playing during his introduction counts as this — at the time, Sega was actually owned by the same company that owned Paramount, Gulf & Western (though the Japanese management had bought the company from Gulf & Western around the same time).
- Rasputinian Death: Keeping in mind this and the previous two films all take place more or less back to back, Jason took having a machete driven into his shoulder, being hanged, an ax slammed into his skull, getting hit in the head with various blunt objects, and finally gets a machete driven through the side of his head which finally kills him. When his hand twitches again, Tommy proceeds to chop into him repeatedly to make sure he's dead.
- Revealing Hug: At the end, as Tommy and Trish embrace, Tommy glares menacingly at the camera. This ends up going nowhere.
- Sarcasm Mode: The male ambulance worker's reaction to Axel's Gallows Humor on how one of the bodies is still good-looking."Nice talk. Real nice talk."
- Shadow Discretion Shot: Combined with Lightning Reveal when Jason kills Terri.
- Shower of Love: Sara and Doug make out in the shower.
- Singing in the Shower: Doug starts singing in the shower after Sara leaves him to prepare herself for more sexy time.
- Skinny Dipping: Samantha is killed during one.
- Slippery Soap: Doug jokes how he accidentally dropped the soap in the shower when he thinks he hears Paul approaching... Good news, it isn't Paul. The bad news, it's Jason.
- Stopped Numbering Sequels: It was supposed to be the last film, after all.
- Sucks at Dancing: Jimmy. Helps the scene was shot with another song, making Crispin Glover's twitching even weirder!note
- Super Window Jump: Trish evades Jason by jumping through a window.
- Tempting Fate: After just losing it to one of the twins, Jimmy asks Ted where the corkscrew for the wine is. So Jason, being the good sport he is, puts it in Jimmy's hand.
- Token Minority: The minor character Lainie, the female ambulance worker, is the only African American in the film's cast. Then again, she does survive the film.
- Too Dumb to Live: Rob and Trish, shortly before their deaths. They split up instead of investigating together, Trish sees Doug's corpse and decides to scream and run frantically despite knowing Jason is lurking around, Rob goes back down the stairs to retrieve a small knife without using the flashlight he had earlier, he then gives up against Jason without bothering to fight back — a stunning display of the trope, compared with Rob's earlier competency. Trish stands there dumbfounded with a machete in her hand and doesn't come to Rob's aid, and slowly walks back down the stairs even though she just saw Jason killing Rob. It's amazing they weren't killed sooner. Rob sensibly packs a hunting rifle when searching for a mass murdering serial killer but when he hears a noise outside his tent he leaves it behind when he goes to investigate and returns to find it destroyed.
- Took a Level in Badass: Tommy who started out as a typical annoying kid who screamed and panicked when Jason grabbed him, ends up being the one to kill Jason. And for good measure, he chops away at him to make sure he stays dead.
- Traumatic Haircut: Tommy shaves his head to give himself the appearance of younger Jason so that he can confuse him.
- Twin Threesome Fantasy: Jimmy and Doug are very intrigued by the sight of the nubile, teenage sisters Tina and Teri.
- Waking Up at the Morgue: First subverted with Axel playing a prank on Morgan, and later played straight with Jason.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The exact fate of Mrs. Jarvis, as the scene of Trish finding her body drowned in the bathtub was cut. The scene had Mrs. Jarvis' corpse opening its eyes and grabbing Trish before revealing it to be a nightmare of Trish's; the deleted scene reminded people way too much of the first and third's endings. The sixth movie did finally settled this, with the Sheriff saying she was indeed killed by Jason.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Armed with a gun and knowledge, Rob is out in the woods looking for Jason. He ends up killed, pathetically.
