Publication Date: 08-16-2025

Sweet Revenge (2025) review

Dir. Mike P. Nelson

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

If Angry Orchard has claimed Jason Voorhees, then I say Twisted Tea, the refreshing and ultimately superior beverage, needs to claim Freddy Krueger. I’d have to change my lifelong allegiance to Jason, which won’t be fun, but I have to be loyal to the brand that’s been loyal to me.

Sweet Revenge — a new short commissioned by the Jason Universe and Angry Orchard hard cider — marks the first time Jason Voorhees has made an appearance in film since the 2009 reboot. The Jason Universe is a multi-platform expansion of the Friday the 13th franchise that allows the iconic slasher to appear on merch and in various mediums such as this one. Despite some warranted skepticism when it was first announced, with the immediate fear being this would be nothing more than a kitschy commercial for the cider brand’s new “Freaky Season” collab, Sweet Revenge is a mostly entertaining romp through the woods.

The threadbare plot involves a gaggle of friends — Eve (Ally Ioannides), Dana (Natassia Wakey), Kyle (Toussaint Morrison), and Troy (Tim James White) — renting a cabin in the woods near Crystal Lake only to find that Jason (stunt coordinator Schuyler White) still haunts these grounds. The short has a slight, tricky subversion of the final girl trope, and limits itself to two gratuitous instances of Angry Orchard product placement.

Directed by Mike P. Nelson, with the help of cinematographer Nick Junkersfeld (both men responsible for the shockingly great reboot of Wrong Turn a few years back), Sweet Revenge is economical with its pacing and handsome in its production. While the gore appears to be practically conceived, there is inevitable disappointment when you realize most of the kills take place off screen. The couple of on-screen kills we get are brutal and welcomed, but it feels like a cop out to bring Jason back and tease us with a deceptively high body count.

Without much mythology baked into the script, Sweet Revenge is a slight but commendable effort to give patient Jason fans something to stomach, particularly as they wait for stores to receive those Angry Orchard “Thriller Packs” of cider. That said, the next Friday the 13th film, when it arrives, will hopefully give us something more substantial as the basis for the return of one of the slasher genre’s all-time greats.

NOTE: Sweet Revenge is available to watch on YouTube, free of charge.

Starring: Ally Ioannides, Natassia Wakey, Toussaint Morrison, Tim James White, and Schuyler White. Directed by: Mike P. Nelson.