Silent Tommy, subject to his own fits of rage and PTSD flashbacks, has come to Camp Pinehurst because - well, we're not really told why either, though we learn that he's been fed tons of psychotropics during his institutional vacay. First thing he does when he unpacks at camp is pull a pocketknife out of his pants, and we know he'll get to use that blade later in the movie because neither of the two camp staffers even thinks to inventory what he brought with him. Later, we see him gazing at a photo of his sister, who also survived the previous Friday, though the movie doesn't bother to tell what's happened to her.
Our traumatized hero keeps seeing flashes of a menacing Jason even though we're told that the big galoot is decidedly demised - and cremated to boot. So the movie's big non-mystery once the actual killings commence becomes, "Is Tommy crazy or is somebody impersonating the legendary killer?" The answer to both questions proves to be yes, of course.
Director Steinman, who also co-wrote the flick, increases the movie's body count for the first time beyond the titular 13, though he retreats from the previous outing's Savini-esque explicitness by keeping the actual moments of impact off-camera. The director makes up for this by upping the actress nudity screen time considerably, most noticeably in a scene where one busty victim lolls around nekkid in the woods, waiting for her doomed boyfriend to return. The girl gets it in the eyes with a pair of lopping sheers, a tweak at all the teenaged voyeurs in the audience, perhaps.
While the bulk of the flick's victims are Tommy's fellow campers, our killer also finds time to take out a white trash Mama and her motorcycle moose of son — characters so broadly drawn as to make Randy Quaid in Independence Day look subdued — plus a jheri-curled black dude who gets it in a rickety tin outhouse. The latter is the older bro of Reggie the Reckless (Shavar Ross), a talkative black kid staying at the camp with his cook grandpa. Reggie is one of the few to make it to the movie's showdown, though unlike that wimp Tommy we don't get the sense at the end that he's been damaged forever by the experience.
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