Following the events of the last film, Tommy Jarvis is released from the local Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He still wrestles with haunting flashbacks of the mass murderer Jason Voorhees, whom he killed years before. Tommy returns to Crystal Lake, now renamed Forest Green, to face his fears once and for all, joined by his wary friend Allen Hawes. The two men visit Jason’s grave during a raging thunderstorm with a plan to cremate the killer’s body and lay Tommy’s nightmares to rest. When they exhume Jason’s corpse, Tommy’s memory surges forward in a brutal flashback of their last encounter: he drives a metal fence post through Jason’s chest, and a pair of lightning bolts strike the post, somehow reviving Jason as a revenant with supernatural strength.
The comeback of Jason is abrupt and vicious. After a brutal turn in which Hawes is killed, Jason slips back into his infamous hockey mask—something Tommy had brought along—transforming the quiet forest into a killing ground once again. Tommy bolts to the sheriff’s office to warn the authorities, but his warnings fall on deaf ears. The blunt, sometimes harsh, Sheriff Mike Garris treats Tommy’s reports as delusions and locks him up, intent on keeping the trouble away from his own station.
Meanwhile, on the forest road, two camp counselors named Darren and Lizbeth stumble and veer off course in search of Camp Forest Green. Their search ends in tragedy as Jason appears and murders them both, signaling that the threat is no longer a ghost story but a living nightmare stalking the area.
By the next morning, Sheriff Garris’ daughter Megan returns to town, accompanied by her friends Sissy, Cort, and Lizbeth’s sister Paula. Megan, a confident and reckless spirit, takes the lead in trying to figure out what happened to Darren and Lizbeth, while Tommy warns the group that Jason has come back in full force and should be treated as a dangerous reality rather than a legend. The teenagers are unsure whether to trust Tommy, but the danger becomes undeniable when Jason crashes a corporate paintball game in the woods. The carnage is graphic: Burt is crushed into a tree, three players are decapitated, and Roy is dismembered before Jason snatches a machete from the survivors.
As children begin arriving at Camp Forest Green, the camp staff and counselors do their best to carry on while the adults wrestle with fear and suspicion. Sheriff Garris, intent on keeping Tommy quiet, orders him moved out of town to erode the possibility of more reports. Tommy makes a desperate attempt to reach Jason’s grave again, only to learn that the caretaker Martin has falsely concealed the grave to dodge responsibility for the grave robbery. Hawes’ corpse lies in Jason’s place, a grim reminder of the killer’s return.
That night, Jason slaughters Martin and a nearby couple who stumble upon his rampage. Cort meets a girl named Nikki, and the two teenagers are stalked by Jason in their RV. Jason pulls Nikki into the bathroom and kills her; Cort is also slain, flipping the RV in the process. When Garris’ deputies discover Nikki’s and Cort’s bodies, he doubles down on blaming Tommy, insinuating that the “delusions” have driven him to murder.
Tommy refuses to give up and reaches out to Megan, asking her to help lure Jason back to Crystal Lake. Megan agrees, and the plan begins to unfold. Jason makes his way toward the camp, indiscriminately killing Sissy and Paula but sparing the younger campers from direct harm. Back in town, Garris pulls Tommy and Megan over for questioning, yet Megan quickly points out that Tommy has been with her for hours, a fact that undermines the Sheriff’s accusation of an accomplice.
Undeterred, Garris and two deputies head to the camp to arrest the supposed partner in crime. Jason strikes first, killing all three lawmen and forcing Garris to admit that Tommy’s warnings may have been valid after all. Megan then breaks Tommy out of custody, and the two speed back toward Camp Forest Green as the night deepens.
The final confrontation erupts with Jason’s presence filling the camp as rescue attempts collide with murder. Garris is killed while trying to shield Megan, who is thrust deeper into the danger. Jason closes in on Megan just as Tommy calls to him from a boat on the lake. The menacing figure hesitates, and Tommy seizes the moment, chaining a heavy boulder around Jason’s neck to trap him under the water. Jason retaliates, wrecking the boat and dragging Tommy beneath Crystal Lake’s surface. Megan dives in to save him; she pushes Jason away with the boat’s outboard motor, wrenching him toward the lake’s bottom. They drag themselves to the shore with Megan reviving Tommy with CPR. Tommy declares that Jason is finally home in a way he never wanted, and the final shot lingers on Jason—still alive but chained by the weight of his own violence, powerless to break free.
