Friday the 13th Film Franchise Review – 12 Movies and One Killer

Some horror franchises are defined by their stories. Others are defined by their characters. Then there’s Friday the 13th, a film series which somehow managed to turn an axe-wielding killer in a hockey mask into one of the recognisable horror icons in cinematic history.

Twelve films. Almost three decades. Countless victims. One extremely annoyed man who refuses to stay dead.

Having revisited every single theatrical entry, from the original Friday the 13th (1980) to the 2009 reboot, I’ve gained more than a few new admiration for what this franchise achieved. But I’ve also reminded myself how spectacularly it managed to lose the plot along the way.

Because when Friday the 13th was good, it was absolutely brilliant.

But when it was bad?

Well, they sent Jason Voorhees into space.

The Birth of a Horror Legend (1980-1984)

The original Friday the 13th was released in 1980. And for the first time in film history, we were introduced to Jason Voorhees.

Or rather, we weren’t. Because he wasn’t the killer in this movie.

We had Pamela Voorhees (played brilliantly by Betsy Palmer), seeking revenge for the death of her son. It’s a fantastic twist on the slasher formula – especially if you’re not familiar with the franchise, which is probably the best way to experience this movie.

The original is still one of my all-time favourites, with Tom Savini’s practical effects remaining absolutely horrifying. The kills are still impressive, the tension around Camp Crystal Lake is expertly built, and Kevin Bacon getting an arrow through his throat is one of the most memorable deaths in horror movie history.

But the best part? The ending.

When you least expect it, and just as you think the movie is over, a young Jason jumps out of the lake and grabs Alice by the ankle.

Bloody hell.

It’s the stuff of horror legend, and Friday the 13th certainly knew how to open with a bang.

Friday the 13th Part 2 followed up the success of the first film, and introduced us to Jason Voorhees, even if he did wear a sack over his head.

But he was certainly a menacing figure.

The kills only get more horrifying, the stalking becomes more effective, and Amy Steel’s Ginny is one of the franchise’s best characters, as she tries to imitate Pamela Voorhees.

Friday the 13th Part III sees Jason find his hockey mask, and it’s one of the most iconic pieces of movie memorabilia you can imagine.

It’s also the film where Jason Voorhees truly becomes a horror icon – and what a way to do it!

We get some fantastically silly 3D effects, objects flying out of the screen, and Rick’s eye literally popping out of his skull.

But beneath the 3D gimmicks lies another great entry in the slasher series, with Jason becoming more imposing.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter sees Jason grow in stature once more, and the movie itself is one of the franchise’s best.

Ted White gives one of the most ferocious portrayals of Jason Voorhees to date, Joseph Zito directs with precision and Tom Savini returns to give us some truly spectacular effects. We’re introduced to Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), one of the franchise’s most important characters who would go onto star in a sequel.

Crispin Glover’s death by corkscrew and cleaver is one of the series’ most inventive, but nothing can top the finale where Tommy keeps stabbing Jason after supposedly killing him, with a look on his face suggesting he’s changed inside.

For me, The Final Chapter is a true peak of the Friday the 13th franchise, with Jason being as threatening as ever.

If he’d stayed dead there, it would’ve been a fantastic ending to the series.

But he didn’t.

Jason Dies, Returns and Becomes Something Else (1985-1988)

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning picks up after the events of The Final Chapter, with Tommy Jarvis heading back to Camp Crystal Lake to investigate the supposed death of Jason Voorhees.

Unfortunately, he discovers that Jason isn’t as dead as he thought.

Roy Burns may have been a decent stand-in for the hockey-masked killer, but finding out we’d been watching an imposter the entire movie was a bit of a disappointment.

There are some amusing moments, and we’re even introduced to Reggie the Reckless, but A New Beginning just never recaptures the magic of the previous entries.

Thankfully, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives bounced back with a vengeance.

Tommy Jarvis accidentally re-animates Jason with a metal fence post and a thunderbolt, and suddenly we had something else entirely.

Zombie Jason.

I honestly have no problem with Jason turning into something else, and this is still one of my favourite Friday the 13th movies.

Director Tom McLoughlin has fun with the material, C.J. Graham makes for a terrifying Jason, the comedy is surprisingly strong, and Alice Cooper’s song gives this movie a real personality.

But beneath the goofy shenanigans lies a movie that retains the spirit of Friday the 13th.

Jason is back in the woods, killing people and doing what he does best.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood brings us Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees – and what a great choice it was.

Kane brings an incredible physicality to the role, and the way he moves makes you believe just how enraged Jason is beneath that mask.

But Jason’s appearance is also something to behold.

His exposed spine, rotting flesh and overall hulking demeanour make this one of the most terrifying interpretations of the killer.

And Tina Shepard’s telekinetic powers are an unusual decision, but pitting her against Jason makes for one of the series’ most entertaining battles.

The sleeping-bag kill is another great entry in Jason’s arsenal, with one swing of the weapon against a tree taking out an unsuspecting victim.

By this point, Jason Voorhees was no longer merely a killer lurking around Crystal Lake.

He was an unstoppable force of nature.

That wasn’t always a good thing, as the characters in some of the later movies would discover.

When the Franchise Lost Its Way (1989-2001)

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan has one of the best premises of the series.

Jason Voorhees is on the loose in New York City.

Unfortunately, most of the action takes place on a boat.

Kane Hodder is as good as ever, delivering some truly horrifying performances, and there are plenty of great kills.

Julius getting his head punched clean off is an all-time classic, as is Jason frightening a group of New Yorkers simply by pulling his mask down.

But the film doesn’t fully capitalise on its premise, with many of the characters being forgettable.

The Friday the 13th franchise was beginning to lose its way.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday picks up immediately after the events of Part VIII, with Jason Voorhees on the run from an elite tactical unit.

The first ten minutes of the movie are fantastic.

Jason looks more monstrous than ever, with his hockey mask practically embedded in his swollen face.

He stalks a woman through the woods, and if it wasn’t for the opening titles, you could mistake this for a classic Friday the 13th movie.

Then the tactical team blows Jason to smithereen, and for most of the rest of the movie, he’s not around.

Instead, we get a bizarre story involving body possession, Jason’s evil spirit jumping from one unfortunate victim to the next, bloodline mythology and a coroner eating his heart.

Yes, eating his bloody heart.

I have absolutely no problem with removing Jason Voorhees from his own movie, but it’s an extraordinary swerve to take right at the end of the series.

Steven Williams gives us another memorable portrayal of Creighton Duke, and the final scene teasing Freddy Krueger is an excellent precursor to the crossover movie.

But neither can save this film from being one of the worst in the series.

Jason Goes to Hell is easily the lowlight of the franchise for me, with the killer barely appearing and the story going in increasingly bizarre directions.

And somehow, it was only going to get worse.

Jason X sends Jason Voorhees into space.

I understand the decision to go in a new direction after nine movies, but there’s a big difference between changing things up and ignoring the series’ legacy entirely.

Jason X manages to have some entertaining moments.

The liquid nitrogen face-smash is one of my favourite kills in the later movies, as is the finale where Jason uses a piece of metal to impale two victims at once.

But the entire movie feels like a strange combination of Friday the 13th and Aliens.

The armed security team hunting Jason through the spaceship is surprising and enjoyable, as is the virtual recreation of Crystal Lake.

But then Jason gets upgraded to a metallic, cybernetic monster…

Fucking Terminator Jason.

It’s ridiculous, and watching him fly around in space before crashing onto Earth 2 made me wonder how far removed we were from the original movie.

I enjoyed Jason X more than Jason Goes to Hell, but I certainly didn’t need another film following Robo-jason around a new planet.

The Friday the 13th franchise was clearly searching for somewhere else to go.

Two Horror Icons Finally Collide (2003)

Ever since the end of Jason Goes to Hell, when Freddy Krueger’s glove appeared, fans of the series had been clamoring for a Freddy vs Jason movie.

And in 2003, Robert Englund and Kane Hodder obliged.

Englund returns as the wisecracking, sadistic killer, while Ken Kirzinger replaces Hodder as Jason. I would’ve liked to have seen Hodder return for this movie, but Kirzinger has the height to make a interesting contrast with Englund’s Freddy.

The huge difference in their stature makes it look like a David-and-Goliath match-up.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Jason’s appearance – the oversized head and mask looked a bit too plastic, almost as if he’d bought it at a costume shop.

But that doesn’t detract from Kirzinger’s performance, which is still physically intimidating.

Englund is, as always, a class act.

Freddy Krueger is still the sadistic, arrogant killer we’ve come to know and love.

The story isn’t anything special, and the human characters are forgettable, but that doesn’t matter, does it?

We want to see two horror icons tear each other apart.

And thankfully, that’s exactly what we get.

The dream-sequence battle between Jason and Freddy is great fun, with the latter using objects around the room to try and kill the former, and the finale at Crystal Lake sees both monsters taking an extraordinary amount of punishment.

It’s not the definitive Freddy vs Jason movie, and it’s not the definitive Friday the 13th movie, but it’s still a bit of fun watching these two horror legends go at it.

And sometimes, that’s all we want.

Bringing Jason Back to Crystal Lake (2009)

After body possession, space travel and a crossover battle, the Friday the 13th franchise finally returned to its roots with Friday the 13th in 2009.

Derek Mears was absolutely perfect as Jason Voorhees.

This Jason wasn’t the lumbering, slow killer who could only appear in Crystal Lake. He was a hunter.

He ran, he set up traps, he used the environment to his advantage and he was as smart as he was strong. He reminded me a lot of Rambo – using the land to help him survive and take out anyone who crossed him.

It was a fantastic take on the killer, and one that terrified me even more than some of his earlier portrayals.

The extended opening sequence is some of the best in the series, especially the sleeping-bag kill above the campfire.

I also loved seeing Jason start off with the burlap bag before finding his hockey mask, as it was a nice nod to the earlier movies without simply relying on nostalgia.

And who better to star in the reboot than Jared Padalecki?

As a huge Supernatural fan, it was great to see Padalecki in another horror movie, especially around the same time as My Bloody Valentine 3D starring Jensen Ackles. I thought his performance as Clay Miller was fantastic, and the search for his sister Whitney added some extra depth to the movie which wasn’t there in the earlier entries.

The movie wasn’t perfect – I found some of the excessive nudity to be a bit ridiculous, and I know it’s part of the formula but there were moments where I would’ve liked to see more Jason.

But overall, the reboot delivered exactly what I wanted.

A scary Jason, some great kills, enjoyable characters and a return to the formula which made the original movies so effective.

The fact we never got a sequel is an enormous disappointment.

I would’ve loved to see Derek Mears return for another film and see where Clay and Whitney’s story goes.

After years of increasingly ridiculous sequels, Jason finally came home. And then he headed back out again.

The Many Faces of Jason Voorhees

One of the things I enjoy most about revisiting the series is seeing how different performers can bring something new to Jason Voorhees.

Richard Brooker helped cement the hockey mask look in Part III, but Ted White in The Final Chapter is arguably the most ferocious Jason in the series.

C.J. Graham gives us the supernatural Jason in Jason Lives, and Kane Hodder brings a physicality to the role which makes you believe in Jason’s menace.

And then there’s Derek Mears, who returns Jason to more terrifying and resourceful killer in the 2009 reboot.

What the best portrayals of Jason have in common is they make the killer seem dangerous.

Not because the script says so, but because the performer brings that quality with them.

Ranking All 12 Friday the 13th Films

After revisiting the entire theatrical series, these are my ratings in the order of release:

Film Rating

Friday the 13th (1980) ★★★★★

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) ★★★★½

Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) ★★★★½

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) ★★★★★

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) ★★★½

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) ★★★★½

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) ★★★★

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) ★★★

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) ★½

Jason X (2001) ★★

Freddy vs. Jason (2003) ★★★

Friday the 13th (2009) ★★★★½

My two five-star movies are the original Friday the 13th and The Final Chapter, but Jason Lives, Part 2, Part 3 and the reboot aren’t far behind.

At the other end of the scale, Jason Goes to Hell is easily my least favourite, with the killer barely appearing and the story taking some ridiculous turns.

Why Friday the 13th Still Matters

For all its ups and downs, there is something incredibly enjoyable about the Friday the 13th franchise.

It was responsible for creating one of the most enduring horror icons in cinematic history, helping to define the slasher sub-genre and delivering some of the most terrifying practical effects in movie history.

You don’t need much with Friday the 13th – simply a hockey mask, a machete and the woods surrounding Camp Crystal Lake.

And perhaps that is where the franchise went wrong in its later years. It became so obsessed with finding new ways to reinvent Jason that it forgot what made the original formula so effective.

I’m not knocking supernatural Jason – far from it. I love Jason Lives for its sheer silliness, but it’s still one of the best entries in the series because it embraces its absurdity. When Jason stops being a literal monster and becomes something else entirely, it’s hard to engage with him as a threat.

The 2009 reboot was proof that Jason Voorhees didn’t need to be anything other than what he was.

Having revisited all twelve movies, I still love the Friday the 13th franchise – even the weaker entries have moments which stand out, whether it be an inventive kill, an outrageous storyline or a great new portrayal of Jason.

But the best entries in the series understand one very important thing: Jason Voorhees doesn’t need to conquer other planets or possess random victims to be frightening. Sometimes all he needs is Crystal Lake.

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