{"id":143802,"date":"2025-08-14T01:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143802\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T01:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:11:09","slug":"jason-is-back-killing-campers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143802\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Is Back Killing Campers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: <\/strong>This story contains spoilers from \u201cSweet Revenge<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on YouTube.<\/p>\n

\u201cSweet Revenge\u201d might be the biggest short film of the year.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt brings back Jason<\/a> Voorhees, the slasher icon at the bloody heart of the \u201cFriday the 13th<\/a>\u201d franchise. The killer hasn\u2019t been in an officially licensed film since 2009\u2019s flashy Michael Bay-produced reboot. But under the leadership of Horror Inc. and Jason Universe, the hockey-masked killer is back in the just-released short film<\/a> written and directed by Mike P. Nelson, who previously helmed the well-received 2021 \u201cWrong Turn\u201d remake, as well as a \u201cSilent Night, Deadly Night\u201d reboot set for this winter.<\/p>\n

\n\tNelson answered burning questions about bringing Jason back from the dead, including how the short film might transition into a feature, how he was able to creatively integrate sponsor Angry Orchard and what a new Jason actor brought to the project.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did your involvement in this project come about?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tJudson Scott and Ryan Turek over at Atomic Monster and Blumhouse threw my name in the mix when Sheri Conn at Horror, Inc. was looking for some options for directors for the project. I got on the phone and we started talking and they said, \u201cWe\u2019re looking for a take. Do you have any ideas?\u201d I was like, \u201cAbsolutely.\u201d I was in the middle of shooting another movie at the time, but I had to give it a shot. You can\u2019t turn down Jason!<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea percolated pretty fast. I love these movies, so how can I keep the vibe, especially of the first four, which are my favorites? How can I bring that feeling when you watch those movies for the first time? I wanted to do that again: Keep the mythology, keep where Jason comes from all intact. I didn\u2019t want to restart anything, but what if we introduce a new character who maybe gives us a bit of insight into what Jason\u2019s path might have been? I wrote the script and we put the thing together in pre-production, shot it in seven days, post was 3 1\/2 weeks and it\u2019s now coming out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tThe Angry Orchard integration plays in unexpected ways in the film. How were you able to pull that off?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt wasn\u2019t the determining factor for everything, but one of the things that I was trying to do was, \u201cHow do I incorporate a wink and a nod to the fact that this is Angry Orchard and that they were great support for the project? How can we do this without doing the usual: A bunch of young people are drinking Angry Orchard, getting drunk and then Jason comes and kills them?\u201d With the main character being Eve, they meet this guy and he, of course, has an apple orchard. She takes a bite of the apple, which starts it all. Later, you have the apple slicer to the face. <\/p>\n

\n\tTo me, it was less about blatantly pushing product and more a feeling of being there, and letting Angry Orchard be the essence, as opposed to being the core, the thing right in the center of frame. I think from both sides, Jason was the forefront. Jason was the thing that we wanted to make sure to bring back and represent the best possible way. Then introduce a new character and see how that goes and how people respond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tYou pay homage to the first \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d film in a scene with Jason jumping out of the water, and you have some subtle nods to the other films with wardrobe, score, etc. How did you determine the line between homage and new ideas?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first thing was I wanted to make sure it was modern day. I didn\u2019t want to do a period piece because I felt like \u2026 I don\u2019t want to call it the easy way out, but that could have very easily been, \u201cYeah, we\u2019re doing a period piece. We\u2019re setting it in the \u201880s and we\u2019re going to do Jason again.\u201d To me, it was more about giving winks and nods and putting in Easter Eggs to some of the wardrobe, which is inspired by some of the other characters in the first movie: Annie\u2019s shoes, the striped shirt with the denim for Dana. It\u2019s just the visual overall tone and color and lighting and the way we placed the camera that was trying to create the old-school feeling.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe music too, which I gotta give a shout out to Matt Compton and Michelangelo Rodriguez, for giving such a great soundtrack to the movie and trying to capture the vibe that those movies had. It was important to make it feel its own, but also give that nod to those originals and say, \u201cThis is why we are here.\u201d To me, those first four movies created a complete feeling of movies in the \u201880s. So if I could get something on that track, in that vibe, then we were good to go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did you decide on Schuyler White as the new Jason?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI think starting fresh \u2014 especially with a fresh idea like this \u2014 just made sense. I had worked with Skyler before on \u201cWrong Turn\u201d and \u201cV\/H\/S\/85,\u201d and we had such a great rapport. He\u2019s a world-renowned stunt performer and coordinator with 16 world records for body burns. And with him being such a fan of the original franchise and knowing what he\u2019s able to do physically, and he\u2019s 6\u20195\u201d \u2014 he was the perfect height. He wasn\u2019t a 7-foot-tall, giant Jason, bodybuilder Jason. You could see that there was a real man to him, which I think was an important part of our Jason.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe would stunt coordinate and really help with our actors, some of whom were stunt performers as well. So that was also very helpful. But he was able to, in a safe way, push the bounds with him being Jason and a stunt person and coordinator playing with other stunt people who were actually actors. So we didn\u2019t have to have a lot of switching out. He was honestly the whole package.<\/p>\n

\t\tHave you thought about what a full-length version of this film would be like?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI have an idea of where I\u2019d love for the story to go after this. It\u2019s not really my hands, whether or not it\u2019s where Horror Inc. and Jason Universe end up going with it. But if I was given the opportunity \u2026 Holy crap, dude. I would snatch it up in a heartbeat. One of the fun things I often play with is we\u2019ve seen Jason on this revenge spree for so long now. What does it look like when he runs into somebody like him? Not Freddy Krueger, not a girl with psychic powers, but like somebody like him who\u2019s come back. What does that look like and what kind of shenanigans and what kind of story unfolds because of that, between the both of them? <\/p>\n

\n\tI think that\u2019s how you keep all the mythology intact and you move the story forward, especially for Jason. You introduce a new character, but then Jason meets somebody that\u2019s different. The story can go beyond just killing teens. Our character at the central story has gone through a transformation, and now she has to deal with it. Not only that, she\u2019s got to deal with this other thing, this guy, this incredible force, this Jason. The story is limitless.<\/p>\n

\t\tIn the film, the kills themselves felt very retro Jason, like using the motor from the boat. But the gore felt more in line with modern slashers like \u201cIn a Violent Nature.\u201d How did you determine the level of gore you wanted in order to hit the right tone?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYou bring up a good point with something like \u201cViolent Nature,\u201d because I think at this point you need to almost match up with something like that. You need to show you mean business, and that\u2019s a movie that you know they mean business. But what was also important to me was that you can look back to those old movies and, yes, there was blood, but they didn\u2019t always show everything, or they would cut away fast. Even with the boat motor kill, we see a first couple of lacerations and then suddenly we cut to like somebody screaming, and then we\u2019re over the shoulder of it, where it\u2019s out of focus. We\u2019re not fully seeing it in graphic detail right away. You see the actual thing grinding up the face, but the face is gone. It\u2019s just this soup, basically, just enough to feed that gorehound.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s what those movies did so well. It was a balance. It was making sure that we could bring in the good modern gore for genre fans, while also getting the flavor of those original movies, and finding out when it was necessary to really show the graphic detail.<\/p>\n

\t\tRegarding the title, it\u2019s just \u201cSweet Revenge\u201d \u2014\u00a0no \u201cJason\u201d or \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d in there. Was that intentional on your end?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tHonestly, it was what I called the script and that\u2019s what we stuck with. It\u2019s supposed to be something that not only can live on its own but can also live within the universe of \u201cFriday the 13th.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tHave you been involved with the \u201cCrystal Lake\u201d prequel series at all?\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, I have not. Honestly, the most I saw was at Comic-Con when they gave a little sneak peek. I\u2019ve seen just as much as anybody else. <\/p>\n

\n\tWatch \u201cSweet Revenge\u201d below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from \u201cSweet Revenge,\u201d now streaming on YouTube. \u201cSweet Revenge\u201d might be the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":143803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,3031,43939,53,61515,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-143802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-friday-the-13th","10":"tag-jason","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-sweet-revenge","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115024460803318836","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}