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Every 'Friday the 13th' Movie Ranked From Worst to Best

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Arguably the best and most telling sequence of the Friday the 13th series surprisingly does not include Jason Voorhees ( Kane Hodder ), the infamous masked mass-murderer of horny teenagers and dope-smoking camp counselors in the greater Crystal Lake area. Not so surprisingly, it occurs in The Final Chapter , which is the most well-directed and inventive volume in the franchise, in stiff competition with the deliriously entertaining sixth part, Jason Lives! . Not that long into The Final Chapter , adolescent Tommy Jarvis, initially played by Corey Feldman , sneaks a peak at a couple of the aforementioned randy teens undressing in a neighboring house and begins to giddily bounce, gesticulate, and roll around on his bed, unable to communicate the wild feelings that are beginning to bubble up in him, what with puberty just an awkward gym-class boner away.

The series, started by Sean S. Cunningham , began as competent and sober, only to become more and more intoxicated with camp and lascivious pleasures and, finally, collapsing into a pile of cheap, cheesy narrative gimmicks or grim gore. I decided to look at what has been most successful in the Friday the 13th films and what has rightly made them the subject of numerous parodies and cinephilic derision.

RELATED: Every Single Jason Kill in the 'Friday the 13th' Franchise Ranked

Editor's Note: This article was last updated on May 12.

12. Jason X

At it's best, Jason X suggests a bit of exuberant fan-fiction - Jason Goes to Space. The film's central conceit, involving Jason being frozen for decades and then "accidentally" thawed out in the future while being transported to Earth 2, is preposterous to say the least. And yet, director Jim Isaac , known more for his special effects work in Gremlins and David Cronenberg 's eXistenZ , doesn't have nearly as much fun with the material as one might expect, turning in an expectedly formulaic yet lazily designed science-fiction dud. The deaths aren't particularly interesting, and the social interactions don't have the punch of youthful energy that the franchise's best installments are driven by. Sure, it gets points for the Cronenberg cameo in the beginning, but the rest of this nonsense, including the sexually charged robot, is a tremendous bore.

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11. Friday the 13th (2009)

This 2009 reboot looks better, from top to bottom, than almost every other film on this list, with the possible exceptions of Part III and The Final Chapter . Unfortunately, the script for this reboot is fucking idiotic, and mind you I'm taking into consideration how silly the other scripts are. The script doesn't play with the mythology at all, or take the chance to reinvent anything from the first round of sequels, but rather focuses on exposition and finding reason behind the defiantly illogical premise and the ludicrous creation that is Jason Voorhees. Rather than toying with the franchise's middling tone, or finding creative new impasses in the story, or, hell, even getting more inventive with the deaths, this reboot simply takes the filmic DNA of the middle sequels and makes them more grim. In effect, the film becomes a case study in how many exercises in modern horror have grown sadistic and faux-realistic rather than imaginative and genuinely fun.

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10. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

In The Final Chapter , we're introduced to the young Tommy Jarvis, who becomes the hero of the series for three installments, the second of which being this bizarre, outlandishly harebrained reconfiguration, which sets Jason's fatal shenanigans in a home for troubled teenagers on Crystal Lake. The tone here is actually pretty spot-on, straddling horror movie and sex comedy with just the right balance, and director Danny Steinmann has a way of highlighting the unique facial expressions of the victims and giving the environs an admirably loopy style. That being said, the film enacts a twist ending that makes The Village 's final moments feel like peak Alfred Hitchcock , a narrative decision so profoundly dumb that it taints even the more juvenile passages of this film, such as the sequence where a couple sings to one another while the man takes a long shit in a port-a-potty. After The Final Chapter , the most tonally acute and entertaining volume of the series, A New Beginning signaled the beginning of Friday the 13th being denoted by gimmicks.

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9. Friday the 13th - Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

This is the one that stings. The premise is impossibly promising, letting the world's foremost expert on machete-wielding and general brutality loose on The City That Never Sleeps. The possibilities are frankly endless, and rather than choose one, the makers of Jason Takes Manhattan spend most of the runtime on the voyage-by-sea to Manhattan, with Jason taking on the role of a rabidly homicidal Ishmael. The performances are especially bad here, but even the encouraging plot of Jason on the High Seas doesn't come to much. The deaths are largely boring on the boat, but once we get to Manhattan, the film lights up with irreverence, most notably in his elongated fight with the boxing champ on the roofs of New York City. Sequences as aggressively bizarre as these only end up teasing what could have been if the film had shown even a modicum in interest in fulfilling the promise of the film's title.

8. Friday the 13th - Part VII: The New Blood

The New Blood came out in the time of Scanners , which may explain why anybody (anybody!) felt the need to match Jason up against a young telepath. In this case, the telepath also happens to be a curious and damaged blonde, who accidentally brings Jason back from the dead when she begins to remember how she killed her father with her powers on the very same stretch of Crystal Lake property. Yes, it's convoluted, and the fact that the telepath storyline is given a bogus sense of self-seriousness bogs The New Blood down hugely. The deaths are not particularly memorable, and the characters, even for Friday the 13th , are written with little in the way of focus or even marginal resonance.

7. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

For what would be the last of the original Friday the 13th films, paving the path for Freddy vs. Jason and the aforementioned 2009 reboot, the creators of the series burdened its monster with a borderline impressive amount of batshit backstory, none of which matches up with the mild lunacy of the rest of the series. The influence of Cronenberg flourishes here as well, as this volume deals largely with body horror and demonic worm-like creatures like the ones audiences could find in Cronenberg's Shivers , not to mention a number of 80s horror films that used slimy worm-bug parasites as their monster of choices. Jason Goes to Hell has a high concentration of memorable deaths, and the film openly buys into the nonsensical tone, but the gimmicky story once again gets in the way of the basic chemistry, making for an interesting experiment in genre but a totally unsatisfying watch.

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6. Freddy vs. Jason

There may be no line as repugnant and cringe-worthy in the entire range of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street entries than "How sweet, dark meat." Such inarguable doozies must be suffered in this hugely anticipated match-up between a brutish, mentally challenged mass murderer and the charred, homicidal pedophile who can slaughter you in your own dreamscape, but beyond the dialogue, this is about as good as could have been hoped for. Those expecting John Carpenter or Wes Craven to take on such an auspicious cinematic event were dreaming, but Chinese action guru Ronny Yu made shadowy, stylish work of the ultimate horror-legend showdown. The script loses its essential trashiness, but what's left is serviceable, if not always defendable.

5. Friday the 13th - Part II

Or, A Portrait of The Immortal Blood-Thirsty Psychotic in His Youth. Here's where we first meet Jason, sporting overalls and cloth sack with an eyehole, taking over the lakeside killer mantle from his mother. The film begins with Voorhees beheading the woman who decapitates his mother, and there's a scrappy, no-budget energy to this primordial tale of Crystal Lake's most ornery resident. The deaths are mostly mild, though this film has a narrative tightness that's similar to the inaugural film and the far more eclectic Part III (in 3D!), the latter of which was directed by Steve Miner , who serves as helmer here as well. Miner would go onto direct insane horror concoctions like House and Warlock , as well horrendous attempts at comedy ( Soul Man ) and drama ( Forever Young ), but here he gives the proceedings an energetic pace and attentive, competent camerawork, making for an admirably tight bit of trash.

4. Friday the 13th

One of the founding works of the slasher sub-genre and, surprisingly, a still pretty rousing watch. The imagery is never much more than competent, but that almost works in its favor under these particular circumstances. Like the NYC slasher classic Maniac , the graininess of the film stock, the cheapness of the production design, serves for ideal environs for this inaugural murder spree, with Mother Voorhees slicing up a pack of counselors fixing up the ol' Camp Crystal Lake. There's also a potent sense of dread, which hits early on when a young woman is murdered in broad daylight after accepting a ride from a stranger. And Betsy Palmer 's climactic appearance makes for just the right amount of gonzo, overtly theatrical madness to cap this grubby wonder.

3. Friday the 13th - Part III

The third chapter of the Jason Voorhees saga was where the direction got a bit more audacious, thanks in no small part to the film being released in 3D, which had seen a resurgence at the time. Even without the glasses, however, Part III benefits from the “Hey! Look at me, ma!”-brand of shooting, adding a more galvanic visual pace and rhythm to the sequel where the first two films leaned heavily on their sober B-movie style. The story here is boilerplate, with some amusing detours, such as the three toughs that bully the teens at the gas station and then make a trip to their cabins to harass them some more. Beyond this, Part III also deserves special placement for being the volume where Jason finds his hockey mask, taken off a particularly annoying, curly-haired teen who gets his kicks scaring his fellow counselors and friends. He should've known that Jason is not much for competition.

2. Friday the 13th - Part VI: Jason Lives

Jason Lives! is the last notable Friday the 13th movie, and arguably the most purely entertaining entry in the whole series. Here, Jason didn't just stand in as the wrecking force brought on by the tinny, rotten Catholic righteousness of the Reagan era, which had been the basic machinery of the franchise up until the fifth iteration. There's a wider scope of machete targets here, and the palette of jokes, deaths, and overall interactions is much, much wider than in any other chapter of the franchise. This remains one of the first horror-comedies to gain popularity, and its screwball sensibilities (see: the death of the chauvinistic paint-ball commando) bind its wild, dark humor with a grotesque set of killings, including a woman getting her face crushed in the side of a winnebago, pin-art style. There's a fuller sense of the world of Crystal Lake and although slasher aficionados might naysay the sillier bent of this entry, this boldness in tone makes Jason Lives! genuinely memorable and giddily enjoyable where so many of the Friday the 13th films are only recalled for single murders or one-liners.

1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

The Final Chapter is the quintessential Friday the 13th film, tinged with comical moments similar to those that elevate Jason Lives! into such a delirious experience and yet more of a slasher in its basic narrative DNA. This is where we first meet Tommy Jarvis, Jason's primary nemesis, if there is one, and the final face-off between Corey Feldman 's Jarvis and Jason is actually pretty unsettling, tapping into some disturbing, if not entirely convincing psychology. This wasn't the kind of performance Feldman was good at, but the film deserves points for swinging for the fences in this manner. For the rest of the film, the former kid-star is more than serviceable, and this film is as acutely attentive to the story's inherent psycho-sexual undercurrents than any other film on the list. The murders range from simple eviscerations to extravagant butchery, and the fact that the cast includes long-working character actors Crispin Glover and Erich Anderson gives the film a certain flair, something like B-grade star-power. It's the most balanced of the Friday the 13th series, landing somewhere between Animal House and Joseph Zito 's slasher classic The Prowler , which shares a director with The Final Chapter but never quite reaches for this film's level of bonafide strangeness.

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All  Friday the 13th Movies Ranked

Strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, language and drug material – all involving teens. Or, at least, 30-year-olds pretending to be teens.

Welcome to Crystal Lake, where the canoes are creaky, the dippin’ is skinny, and the camp activities are to die for. Since 1980, the shah of slashers, Jason Voorhees, has been terrorizing any who are unlucky enough to reach its shores. His murderous method? Anything he can get his naughty paws on, be it machete, harpoon gun, or sleeping bag. The original Friday the 13th was one of those no-budget grubby horror flicks with massive returns, secure among the likes of Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre . The franchise it spawned is a shining, bloody emblem of the golden age of slasher movies, though critics grew less appreciative of the series’ increasingly ludicrous carnage. But the  Friday franchise’s memorable soundtrack, frequently tongue-in-cheek atmosphere, and iconic star has kept it in the horror conversation for decades, carrying audiences though 3-D (the third Friday , where Jason first dons the hockey mask), deep space ( Jason X ), celebrity death matches ( Freddy vs. Jason ), and utter meltdowns ( Jason Goes to Hell ).

Friday the 13th (1980) 66%

Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) 53%

Freddy vs. Jason (2003) 42%

Friday the 13th Part VII -- The New Blood (1988) 33%

Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981) 33%

Friday the 13th (2009) 25%

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) 21%

Jason X (2002) 20%

Friday the 13th -- A New Beginning (1985) 18%

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) 16%

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) 11%

Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982) 11%

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Friday the 13th

A group of teenage camp counselors attempt to re-open an abandoned summer camp with a tragic past, but they are stalked by a mysterious, relentless killer. A group of teenage camp counselors attempt to re-open an abandoned summer camp with a tragic past, but they are stalked by a mysterious, relentless killer. A group of teenage camp counselors attempt to re-open an abandoned summer camp with a tragic past, but they are stalked by a mysterious, relentless killer.

• Sean S. Cunningham
• Victor Miller
• Betsy Palmer
• Adrienne King
• Jeannine Taylor
• 948 User reviews
• 194 Critic reviews
• 22 Metascore
• 6 nominations

Top cast 23

• Mrs. Voorhees

• Steve Christy

• The Truck Driver

• Sgt. Tierney

• Officer Dorf

• Crazy Ralph

• Ron Kurz (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The movie was filmed at Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in New Jersey. The camp is still in operation, and it has a wall of Friday the 13th (1980) memorabilia to honor that the movie was set there.
• Goofs (at around 40 mins) When Brenda rolls the dice to start the strip Monopoly game, she says she rolls double sixes and gets to roll again, but you can clearly see the 1 and 2 she actually rolled. The same for the guy, who clearly rolled a 10, though it's said that he rolled an 8.

[last lines]

Alice : The boy. Is he dead, too?

Tierney : Who?

Alice : The boy. Jason.

Tierney : Jason?

Alice : In the lake, the one... the one who attacked me. The one who pulled me underneath the water.

Tierney : Ma'am, we didn't find any boy.

Alice : But... then he's still there.

• Crazy credits We see giant letters proclaiming 'Friday the 13th' moving toward the screen, and crashing into and smashing a pane of glass.
• Alternate versions As of the 11/09/2003, the BBFC passed "Friday the 13th" completely uncut, and Warner Bros. has restored the original gory version for release on Region-2 DVD with a total of 34 seconds of footage restored. Much of the extra running time comprises different opening logos and about 11 seconds of gore has been restored to the death scenes of Annie, Marcie, Jack, and Pamela Voorhees.
• Connections Edited into Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
• Soundtracks Sail Away, Tiny Sparrow (uncredited) Written by Harry Manfredini and John R. Briggs Performed by Angela Rotella

User reviews 948

• darimoviesthoughtsoffilms
• Sep 12, 2019
• How long is Friday the 13th? Powered by Alexa
• What is 'Friday the 13th' about?
• Is "Friday the 13th" based on a book?
• Why does Camp Crystal Lake have such a bad reputation?
• May 9, 1980 (United States)
• United States
• A Long Night at Camp Blood
• Camp Nobebosco - 11 Sand Pond Road, Blairstown, New Jersey, USA (Camp Crystal Lake)
• Paramount Pictures
• Georgetown Productions Inc.
• Sean S. Cunningham Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $550,000 (estimated)
• $39,754,601
• May 11, 1980
• $39,916,601

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes

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Friday the 13th (1980) (Movie Review)

Evan slead's rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ director: sean s. cunningham | release date: 1980.

This is the first installment of our head-to-head review between the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises. Check out what Sophie had to say about the corresponding Freddy film here! 

With the success of the iconic holiday slasher film  Halloween in 1978, other low budget filmmakers were seeking out possible concepts to follow up with the new slasher renaissance. Enter Sean S. Cunningham, producer of  The Last House on the Left  in team with Wes Craven, as the director of the summer camp horror flick  Friday the 13th . Due to the mega success of the entire  Friday the 13th franchise, including nine additional films and a remake in 2009, looking back on the original film conjures up several points of enjoyment but also confusion. With a series led by the anti-hero of Jason Voorhees, the fact that part one of his story didn't realize the potential of the character is interesting. Instead of a hack and slash, Jason gets the girl type romp, the original  Friday the 13th  is much more of a murder mystery mixed with the mother and son psychosis of Hitchcock's  Psycho . 

Camp Crystal Lake has finally opened its log cabins and starry skies to the new counselors ready to watch over kids in the hot summer months. Despite the murder of two young teens years before as well as continual issues with water contamination, the camp has been repurposed for children to spend their holiday break in its woods. As counselors begin to show up for duty, the infamy of "Camp Blood" begins to pour out from townsfolk. Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer) wrangles up his counselors to get the camp ready for the new kids to stay. Alice (Adrienne King) shows the most care for the camp while Marcie (Jeannine Taylor), Jack (Kevin Bacon), Bill (Harry Crosby), Ned (Mark Nelson), and Brenda (Laurie Bartram) are all giving their time to Christy for different reasons. When the final counselor, Annie (Robbi Morgan), never makes it to camp for duty, the other counselors grow suspicious that Camp Crystal Lake hasn't shaken away its bloody past. A mysterious killer has returned to the camp and begins to pick off the counselors one by one. Who this killer is remains a mystery until the final moments with Alice by the lakes edge. Is it crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) from town, tight short camp owner Steve, or the killer from years ago seeking revenge? 

Looking at  Friday the 13th  with modern knowledge, it's difficult to find the murder mystery aspect as strong as it was to audiences in 1980. When the killer is revealed it breaks the rules of the murder mystery template due to the mystery figure being someone never shown on camera during the first two acts of the film. Nowadays it's famously known that Mrs. Voorhees, played by Betsy Palmer, is the killer in the film and not one of the other characters set up as the possible mystery figure. Setting the mystery aside, once that cheat is looked past, the overall movie works well. Mrs. Voorhees killing teens in order to gain revenge for the drowning of her son Jason is a nice and eerie motivation for the murders. Portrayed brilliantly by Palmer, Mrs. Voorhees has a relationship with Jason that is reminiscent of Norman Bates and his mother, just flipped. Mrs. Voorhees flips from concerned parental figure to murderous mother whispering in Jason's voice "Kill her, mommy! Kill her!" that really drives home the insanity. It adds layers to the character that make it feel like a higher caliber slasher flick in the same ball park as  Halloween . Truthfully  Halloween was the blueprint for this film, as was  Psycho  for the psychological aspect.

The Tom Savini gore effects were also a key factor in setting this film up for success. When characters are killed throughout the movie there is more of a focus on showing the final damage and gore in full light. Marcie's death in the bathroom where she receives an axe to the head lets the shot stay on her impaled and bloody face. The death of Mrs. Voorhees also has the grit that blood thirsty audiences clamored for as Alice whacks her head off with an axe. Moving away from gore, the set ups for scares also worked well. Not all deaths were shown on screen and were saved for Alice to find in the end, much like Laurie Strode's encounter with her friends dead bodies in  Halloween . The suspense is built through scenes like Alice hiding in the pantry from Mrs. Voorhees, a subtle hand moving in the shower stall behind Marnie, and ultimately figuring out who the killer could possibly be. 

Despite decades of enhanced digital effects and the slasher genre coming to a close,  Friday the 13th  still shows its diplomacy as a trailblazer for the genre. While the overall mystery may have been somewhat of a cheat, the attention on kills and pushing a vengeful killer on unsuspecting teens made it an early blueprint for future slasher and horror movies to follow. The entire cliché of "have sex and die" is more prevalent here than in  Halloween,  interestingly, which gives it its own street cred in the genre. The final scare of young Jason jumping out of the lake easily places this film in the must see list for any horror fan and cements it in the pantheon of classic slashers.

Body Count:  10

Most Creative Kill:  Hands down the most creative kill goes to...Kevin Bacon! While Jack is relaxing in his bunk of steamy love, his throat gets a little scratchy due to the arrow piercing through it! It's an iconic kill that not only left an impression with audiences, but also put the effects master, Tom Savini, on the map. 

Staff Writer

Evan is a Film & Media Studies major in Boston and the host of PodSlash podcast. He loves writing novels and screenplays, and also all things Real Housewives. Don't hate.

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‘friday the 13th’: thr’s 1980 review.

"Blatant exploitation of the lowest order"

By THR Staff

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Friday the 13th 1980 Still - H 2014

It may be hard to remember, but there was a time when the name Jason Vorhees wasn’t part of the horror lexicon. In 1980 director Sean S. Cunningham unleashed the original Friday the 13th , a film that would go on to define the slasher era through sequel after profitable sequel (though Jason’s iconic hockey mask wouldn’t actually show up until the third installment in 1982). On May 9, 1980, The Hollywood Reporter published its review of the film:

Gruesome violence, in which throats are slashed and heads are split open in realistic detail, is the sum content of Friday the 13th , a sick and sickening low budget feature that is being released by Paramount. It’s blatant exploitation of the lowest order.

Produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham through Georgetown Prods., there is nothing to recommend about this ghastly effort, which simply details a series of grisly murders. The script by Victor Miller introduces a group of young people who are working to reopen a summer camp, which had earlier been the scene of several unexplained murders and which is called Camp Blood by the locals. From there on out, the kids are knocked off one by one, with the killer and cliched motivation finally being revealed in the final sequence.

Cunningham seems obsessed with shock value, which is the only thing he achieves during the 91-minute running time. The performances are credible, although no real acting is required, and the technical production is slick, including Barry Abrams’ photography and Bill Freda’s editing, which allows the full impact of the mutilations but which mercifully cuts away quickly. —Ron Pennington

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Beginning in 1980,  Friday The 13th   is one of the biggest horror movie franchises of all time. Ever since John Carpenter's  Halloween started the slasher movie craze in the late 1970s, few follow-up movies started long franchises that are still popular, today. The story of Jason Voorhees and Camp Crystal Lake has lived on in horror movie history, and the hockey mask itself is just as memorable for these films as the sport itself. Friday The 13th 's   influence is apparent in other horror movies as well including the popular  Scream   franchise and  The Cabin In The Woods . 

RELATED:  Friday The 13th: Jason Voorhees' 10 Best Weapons

Even though fans of the horror genre loved these movies, critics were very harsh on the films due to the level of violence against young adults depicted in them and how repetitive they can be. That includes the reviews kept on Rotten Tomatoes .

Friday The 13th: Part 3 (1982) - 7%

Originally released in 3D, this film takes place immediately after the events of the second movie. This is mostly known for introducing Jason's iconic hockey mask to the franchise. When a young woman and her friends arrive at her family cabin, they begin to get knocked off one by one by the famous horror movie villain.

This film is cheesy '80s fun, and the heroine is one of the better opponents against Jason. The final chase scene itself is probably one of the very best in the franchise.

Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) - 8%

Graduating high school students take a trip on a boat to New York City and little do they know Jason Voorhees is on board. After some of the students are killed, the remaining survivors make it to Manhattan, but Jason is following close behind them.

This film does not try to take itself seriously. It is all one big joke, and it is funny to see Jason in a completely different setting. It may not be one of the best-written movies in the franchise, but it is still a little entertaining.

Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993) - 16%

After Jason is killed by an FBI task force, people finally believe Jason is truly dead. However, Jason's spirit begins possessing people, and killings begin once again. This is a strange entry in the series that is very different than other films in the franchise.

RELATED:  Friday The 13th: 10 Worst Kills Of The Franchise

It is fun to see John D. LeMay in the lead role since he was one of the leads in the  Friday The 13th  TV series that ran in the late 1980s. The cameo appearance of the Freddy Krueger glove at the end of the movie is great as well.

Jason X (2002) - 19%

This slasher franchise becomes science-fiction with this entry in the series. Jason is cryogenically frozen, and when he awakens in the year 2455, he begins killing people in a spaceship. This is one of those "so-bad-it's-good" movies that fans of the franchise seem to enjoy.

It is so different from most movies in the series that sometimes it's hard to believe that this is a  Friday The 13th  movie. Things escalate quickly when Jason gets an upgrade, and it basically becomes an action film by the time the movie reaches the final act.

Friday The 13th: A New Beginning (1985) - 19%

Traumatized after the events of the previous movie, Tommy Jarvis has grown up and been sent to a halfway house where a series of brutal murders begin once again. Is Jason back or has Tommy become the new killer?

This is an interesting film that has gained more respect since its initial release. It still has that classic  Friday The 13th  formula, but the reveal of the killer left many viewers disappointed. Overall, though, the film is fun to watch.

Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) - 20%

Considered by fans to be one of the very best movies in the franchise, this film was originally meant to be the final installment. It introduces Tommy Jarvis, played in this movie by Corey Feldman, and stuntman Ted White's depiction of Jason just may be one of the very best versions in the franchise.

RELATED:  Friday The 13th: 10 Best Survivors Of The Movies, Ranked

It has fantastic kills, fun characters, great chase scenes, and it is an enjoyable thrill ride from beginning to end.

Friday The 13th (2009) - 26%

This is the latest installment of the franchise to date. It is basically a remake of the first few classic films in the series. It involves a group of young adults staying at their rich friend's cabin at Crystal Lake, and they meet a man, played by  Supernatural 's Jared Padalecki , who is searching for his sister who has gone missing.

It is an okay entry in the series that basically repeats the formula of other  Friday The 13th  films. It just does not have the cheesy '80s charm that also plays a big role in those earlier entries.

Friday The 13th: Part 2 (1981) - 28%

In the follow-up to the classic original film, a camp counselor-in-training program starts near Camp Crystal Lake, and murders begin to happen once again. This is the first film in the franchise with Jason Voorhees as the iconic killer.

He may not have the hockey mask in this movie, but that does not matter since the film relies on suspense, good chase scenes, and fun characters in order to make it memorable. The final girl, Ginny , is arguably the series' very best, and her confrontation with Jason in the shack is one of the best moments in the entire franchise.

Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) - 33%

A young girl with telekinetic abilities accidentally kills her father at Crystal Lake. Years later, she and her mother return in order to work with her doctor on moving past that painful event. However, the doctor, played by  Weekend At Bernie 's Terry Kiser, wants her to use her powers for his personal gain.

RELATED:  Friday The 13th: 10 Characters That Deserved Their Fate

When Jason comes back to life once again, the telekinetic young woman must use her abilities to fight for her survival. This is a fun movie with some cool special effects sequences, and the final battle is definitely a joy to watch.

Freddy Vs. Jason (2003) - 41%

In this big crossover movie, the villainous Freddy Krueger from the  A Nightmare On Elm Street   franchise resurrects Jason Voorhees so he can help kill more teenagers. The more people that die, the stronger Freddy becomes. When Freddy starts to lose control over Jason, he decides he must kill him.

This all leads to an epic, long battle between the two popular horror movie villains that is sure to make fans of both franchises happy and entertained until the end credits roll.

Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) - 48%

After Jason's absence in the fifth installment, he is finally back. Tommy Jarvis accidentally resurrects Jason, and as he tries to stop him, Jason goes on another killing spree. This movie is campy fun with lots of callbacks and jokes about the franchise.

It is self-aware and winks at the audience, and it had an influence on Kevin Williamson when he wrote  Scream . It is entertaining from beginning to end, and the theme song "He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask)" by Alice Cooper fits perfectly with the tone of the film.

Friday The 13th (1980) - 64%

This is the one that started it all. When a group of camp counselors arrive at Camp Crystal Lake, they are picked off one by one by an unknown killer. This classic horror movie relies on atmosphere, suspense, and tension in order to create the eeriness and scares in the movie.

Tom Savini delivers some amazing makeup effects, and it is fun seeing Kevin Bacon in one of his first film roles. It is an absolute horror classic, launching one of the longest-running horror franchises of all time.

NEXT:  5 Ways Friday The 13th Is The Best Summer Camp Horror Movie (& 5 Ways It's Sleepaway Camp)

• Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th, Part 2

I saw “Friday The 13th, Part 2” at the Virginia Theater, a former vaudeville house in my hometown of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The late show was half-filled with high school and college students, and as the lights went down I experienced a brief wave of nostalgia. In this very theater, on countless Friday nights, I’d gone with a date to the movies. My nostalgia lasted for the first two minutes of the movie. 

The pretitle sequence showed one of the heroines of the original “Friday The 13th,” alone at home. She has nightmares, wakes up, undresses, is stalked by the camera, hears a noise in the kitchen. She tiptoes into the kitchen. Through the open window, a cat springs into the room. The audience screamed loudly and happily: It’s fun to be scared. Then an unidentified man sunk an ice pick into the girl’s brain, and, for me, the fun stopped. 

The audience, however, carried on. It is a tradition to be loud during these movies, I guess. After a batch of young counselors turns up for training at a summer camp, a girl goes out walking alone at night. Everybody in the audience imitated hoot-owls and hyenas. Another girl went to her room and started to undress. Five guys sitting together started a chant: “We want boobs!” The plot: In the original movie, a summer camp staff was wiped out by a demented woman whose son had been allowed to drown by incompetent camp counselors. At the end of that film, the mother was decapitated by the young woman who is killed with an ice pick at the beginning of “Part 2.” The legend grows that the son, Jason, did not really drown, but survived, and lurks in the woods waiting to take his vengeance against the killer of his mother É and against camp counselors in general, I guess. 

That sets up the film. The counselors are introduced, very briefly, and then some of them go into town for a beer and the rest stay at the camp to make out with each other. A mystery assailant prowls around the main cabin. We see only his shadow and his shoes. One by one, he picks off the kids. He sinks a machete into the brain of a kid in a wheelchair. He surprises a boy and a girl making love, and nails them to a bunk with a spear through both their bodies. When the other kids return to the camp, it’s their turn. After almost everyone has been killed in a disgusting and violent way, one girl chews up the assailant with a chain saw, after which we discover the mummies in his cabin in the woods, after which he jumps through a window at the girl, etc. 

This movie is a cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead teenager genres; about two dozen movies a year feature a mad killer going berserk, and they’re all about as bad as this one. Some have a little more plot, some have a little less. It doesn’t matter. 

Sinking into my seat in this movie theater from my childhood, I remembered the movie fantasies when I was a kid. They involved teenagers who fell in love, made out with each other, customized their cars, listened to rock and roll, and were rebels without causes. Neither the kids in those movies nor the kids watching them would have understood a world view in which the primary function of teenagers is to be hacked to death. *This review will suffice for the Friday the 13th film of your choice.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Friday the 13th Reviews

• 34   Metascore
• 1 hr 37 mins
• Horror, Suspense
• Watchlist Where to Watch

This frightening remake really ratchets up the terror as vacationing collegians join a young man searching for his missing sister at Camp Crystal Lake, home of machete-wielding, hockey-masked Jason Voorhees.

Reviewed By: Cammila Collar

It's a pretty serious conundrum to remake a classic movie. Most of the time, what makes a film a classic is that it's really, really good, so a remake is almost always doomed to fall short of the original. This inevitably angers fans -- who are mortified to see something so much less awesome done with their beloved source material -- but what are studios to do? They still need to cash in on their best titles by regurgitating them for kids born long after the film in question was released on Betamax. Well, one remake seems to have figured a way out of this maze: 2009's Friday the 13th.The reasons for this are numerous. First, it's not really a remake. Okay, maybe the first five minutes are -- a flashback to 1980, when a screaming would-be victim lops off the head of disgruntled mom Mrs. Voorhees (who, viewers will remember, was the killer in the first movie, not Jason, who doesn't start killing until the second, and doesn't even get his hockey mask until the third). After that, the movie is more a tribute to all the sequels than a remake of any one. The hot, young, totally generic teenagers who trespass into Jason's Crystal Lake stomping ground all have massive early-'80s feathered hair, and they spend the entire runtime smoking weed, waterskiing topless, and having tons and tons of graphic, R-rated-and-proud sex with each other before getting stabbed, sliced, harpooned, etc.That weed, by the way, is given a fairly significant supporting role, as we learn that at least some of the previous hot teenagers to die by Jason's meat hook (or whatever) were attracted there by the area's abundant natural resources. And the breasts deserve at least second billing, appearing within the first 15 minutes to get smeared with what appears to be baby oil in the middle of a camping trip -- before copulation or water sports even enter into the equation. In addition to being awesome, it all just feels kind of celebratory, even reverent, like a tribute to what teen slasher films are all about. There are also a few strangely intimate glimpses into Jason's inner world, but nothing in the script feels like the filmmakers were trying to mess with the mythology of the franchise (not that they really could, since the last movie had him killing people in space). It's not an openly meta take on the genre like Scream, but it's a slasher movie for people who love slasher movies, and if your heart will flutter when a woodchipper casually appears in the first act, it's probably worth watching.

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Friday the 13th: part iii.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 1 Review
• Kids Say 3 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Repetitive sequel has gruesome violence, sex, drug use.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Friday the 13th: Part III is the third film in the famous slasher franchise and follows the same premise as previous installments -- masked killer Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) hunts and kills a group of teens. There is constant threat and plenty of violent killings, though the…

Why Age 16+?

Constant threat from masked killer. Dead bodies shown, as well as a decomposing

Sex is portrayed on-screen with partial nudity -- a character's breasts are seen

Characters smoke bongs and joints, as well as cigarettes. They also drink alcoho

Language includes "s--t," "a--hole," "bitch," "bastard," "crap," "damn," "goddam

Campbell's soup and other brands seen on shelves in a shop and branded products

Any Positive Content?

Teen characters are generally interested in smoking pot and having sex. Chris is

Characters adhere to stereotypical gender roles -- an older woman is seen doing

Few positive messages with a serial killer routinely murdering a group of teens.

Violence & Scariness

Constant threat from masked killer. Dead bodies shown, as well as a decomposing decapitated head. Characters are attacked and die in various ways, including being electrocuted, hit with objects, hung by a noose, and having body parts cut off, as well as being stabbed with a pick axe, knife, meat cleaver, pitch fork, knitting needle, hot poker, and spear gun, often with the weapon coming out through the other side and blood from wounds, mouth, nose, and ears. Particularly gruesome murders include a character sliced between the legs with a machete, and their legs splayed outwards and arranged around their shoulders, their innards showing, and another has their skull crushed with bare hands, their eye popping out of the socket. Gore is generally seen briefly, and some may look unrealistic to horror fans used to more advanced modern effects. There are physical fights including hitting, kicking, strangling, and being pulled by the hair. Death of a mother is mentioned. References to previous brutal murders. Someone tries to warn the teens away with an extracted human eyeball.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sex is portrayed on-screen with partial nudity -- a character's breasts are seen from the side, and they are later seen topless from behind in the shower. There is kissing and movement and moaning beneath sheets. Sexual references.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters smoke bongs and joints, as well as cigarettes. They also drink alcohol, including spirits straight from the bottle on one occasion.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "s--t," "a--hole," "bitch," "bastard," "crap," "damn," "goddammit," "jerk," and exclamations of "oh my God" and "Jesus Christ."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Campbell's soup and other brands seen on shelves in a shop and branded products shown on a bathroom shelf. Character reads Fangoria horror magazine.

Positive Role Models

Teen characters are generally interested in smoking pot and having sex. Chris is more responsible and shows herself to be smart and resourceful when under pressure. Jason Voorhees is a sadistic serial killer.

Diverse Representations

Characters adhere to stereotypical gender roles -- an older woman is seen doing laundry and complaining her husband doesn't help, a female character tells a male character to "be a man" and go down in the cellar in the dark, and teen boys generally joke around while girls roll their eyes. A male character calls a female character a "bitch" when she says she's not interested in him. As with many slashers, the "final girl" shows herself to be smart, strong, and resourceful. A teenage girl is pregnant, expecting a baby with her boyfriend, which is accepted without comment within the group. The cast is predominantly White. One character, Vera Sanchez, is Latina and argues with her mother in Spanish. The only Black characters in the film are members of a motorbike gang, who threaten the other characters at a gas station and plan to burn down their barn. Most of the teens are slim and attractive. Their friend Shelly has a bigger body type and refers to his looks as unattractive, saying he's not skinny enough to go skinny dipping. One of the girls refers to him as "butterball" behind his back.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Few positive messages with a serial killer routinely murdering a group of teens. Vengeance is a powerful force. Sometimes people are helpless in the face of danger.

Parents need to know that Friday the 13th: Part III is the third film in the famous slasher franchise and follows the same premise as previous installments -- masked killer Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) hunts and kills a group of teens. There is constant threat and plenty of violent killings, though the gore is only seen briefly on-screen and may look unrealistic at times to modern horror audiences used to more advanced special effects. That said, some of the killings are shocking in their nature, such as when a character is sliced between the legs with a machete and another who has their skull crushed. Sex is portrayed with partial nudity, and language such as "s--t" and "a--hole" is frequently used. Characters smoke bongs and joints and alcohol is consumed. The cast is majority White, with the only two Black actors playing characters in a threatening motorbike gang. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (1)
• Kids say (3)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

In FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III, a group of teens arrive at a cabin near Crystal Lake to let loose for the weekend. Little do they know that masked killer Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) is lurking in the shadows waiting to pick them off one by one.

Is It Any Good?

For those who enjoyed the original and first sequel of the franchise, there's enough to like here because it's pretty much the same -- some teens head to Crystal Lake and get picked off one by one. There are a few more inventive killings thrown into the mix for Friday the 13th: Part III -- memorably one that involves a teen being macheted between the legs and splayed open like a turkey -- and it's clear where scenes have been set up to allow for its 3D screenings -- a pole reaching out toward the audience, a spear flying out toward a character's eye -- but otherwise there's nothing new here. Characters are similarly generic, sex-crazed teens, none of whom we get to know well enough to care a huge amount when they meet the same pointy reckonings as those who came before.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the level of violence in Friday the 13th: Part III . Having been made in the 1980s, how did the violence and gore compare to modern slasher-style horrors? Do you think the film is as scary today as it would have been on its original release?

How were drinking, smoking, and drugs portrayed? Were there consequences? Did it glamorize them?

This is the third film in a franchise that has spawned sequels and remakes into double figures. Have you seen any other movies in the franchise? How did this one compare? Can you think of other famous horror franchises that have gone on to include a similar number of films? What similarities and differences are there?

How did the movie portray sex and relationships? Was it affectionate? Respectful? Parents, talk to your teens about your own values regarding sex and relationships.

The movie includes stereotypical gender roles and a lack of ethnic diversity within the cast -- with the few Black characters portrayed as being in a threatening biker gang. Why is it important to show positive representation on-screen? How might the film be different if it was made today?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 13, 1982
• On DVD or streaming : October 17, 2000
• Cast : Dana Kimmell , Tracie Savage , Richard Brooker
• Director : Steve Miner
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Female writers
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 95 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• Last updated : December 11, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

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Friday the 13th Reviews

On the surface, Friday the 13th has remained a classic of both the horror and slasher genre. But at its core, it is a story of madness and revenge within the unrelenting spirit of a prophesied evil.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2023

The best bits of Halloween, Carrie, and Hitchcock’s Psycho were cheekily repurposed here by the director Sean S Cunningham for a slasher movie — the first of a whopping 12 installments — that remains the genre standard-bearer.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 12, 2023

There’s some bizarre fun in this (almost innocent) film, but maybe the fanbase are the ones to get most out of a revisit.

Betsy Palmer, cast as Mrs. Voorhees, delivers the most embarrassing performance found in ANY film in the franchise.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 21, 2021

Although nothing about the film stands out as incredibly imaginative, the production isn't without a certain level of amusement.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 6, 2020

The likable, non-stereotypical teens in Friday the 13th didn't do anything wrong per se, yet they get punished. It makes you wonder if there's any ex-[your job here] running around out there, just looking for the right time to strike.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | May 10, 2020

Jason Vorhees, the great golem of Paramount Studios and Warner Brothers Pictures, will always be here for us when we need to be frightened, titallated, distracted, or when we need a laugh.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2020

Friday the 13th is not a good movie, but it achieves its objective: to make the public feel adrenaline. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 13, 2019

The final reel reveal of the killer (not Jason) kicks the film into a higher gear.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 13, 2018

Cunningham skilfully works up plenty of gory scares, while also allowing the audience to sympathise with the counsellors.

It's blatant exploitation of the lowest order.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2014

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 22, 2013

It depicts what is surely the first recorded instance of the game "Strip Monopoly" and would later inspire Wet Hot American Summer, and we should all be grateful for that.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 15, 2012

Infamous teen slasher film has gory violence, sex.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 15, 2010

It hasn't aged well; its nonstyle renders it pretty sedate these days.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Oct 19, 2010

Within the dead-teenie realm it achieves a certain classicism

Full Review | Sep 6, 2009

Has there ever been a more unimaginative exercise in big-screen terror?

Full Review | Aug 21, 2009

What makes the movie work is that the slasher genre hadn't been set in stone yet, and some choices that director Sean S. Cunningham makes in the film that work against type.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 5, 2009

a campfire boogeyman story designed to do little more than build tension and deliver a few well-timed shocks, which it does with precision and even a bit of artistry

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 14, 2009

How do you sum up a movie that's really quite awful yet helped define a filmmaking era?

Full Review | Original Score: 64/100 | Feb 13, 2009

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• DVD & Streaming

Friday the 13th

• Drama , Horror , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Jared Padalecki as Clay; Danielle Panabaker as Jenna; Amanda Righetti as Whitney; Travis Van Winkle as Trent; Derek Mears as Jason Voorhees

Home Release Date

• Marcus Nispel

Distributor

• Warner Bros.

Movie Review

Jason has issues.

He’ll never drop his machete long enough to sit on a therapist’s couch or anything. But if he did, Jason would spend his sessions talking about how his horrible deformities shaped his childhood. About how the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake ignored and abused him. About how his own mother was decapitated right before his eyes. He’d lament the fact that he had to raise himself—eating and sleeping and setting up creepy shrines to his dead mother on Crystal Lake’s deserted campground.

And he’d be told by his therapist that what he really needs is some love, some encouragement … and a little prison time so he can cool down a bit. Perhaps a really, really good counselor could funnel Jason’s inborn zeal into a more socially acceptable skill—like accounting, perhaps.

Because really, Jason’s current career track is a dead end. Well, more for others than for him, I guess. If the world has learned anything from the previous 11 Friday the 13th movies, it’s that Jason is more resilient than a post-nuclear cockroach. But few teens who wander into Jason’s machete range survive the experience.

The 12th chapter in the Friday the 13th saga—a franchise reboot titled, somewhat unimaginatively, Friday the 13th —is more of the same: Teens wander into Camp Crystal Lake. Teens have sex, take drugs and behave badly. Jason picks teens off, one by one. Friday the 13th moviegoers don’t ask whether someone will die: That’s a given. Rather, it’s a question of when, with what and how many liters of blood will be spilled in the process .

Positive Elements

As were its predecessors, Friday the 13th is, when you get right down to it, a really, really, really twisted morality tale. Here’s the moral: Behave, or Jason will kill you.

Bad characters—teens who drink, take drugs or engage in untoward sexual activity—die. Those who don’t—well, some of them die, too. But they live a wee bit longer. And a few might even make it to the closing credits.

Whitney is probably the film’s most obvious “nice” character���a pretty teen who, when not camping at Crystal Lake, cares for her dying mother. When she goes missing, her brother Clay starts scouring the area looking for her—also a nice thing to do. And then there’s Jenna, who feels bad for Clay and tries to help him.

OK, so none of these high schoolers would qualify for a Nobel Peace Prize … but we’ll take what we can get here.

Spiritual Elements

Jason keeps his mother’s mummified skull in a little shrine-like alcove and surrounds the whole thing with candles.

Sexual & romantic Content

“If there were not blood at all in the movie (there is tons) it would get a hard-R rating just for nudity and sexual situations alone,” Brad Fuller, a Friday the 13th producer, wrote on his Platinum Dunes blog.

Topping the list is a tryst between Trent, the film’s designated rich jerk, and Bree, one of the designated sexpots. Trent’s girlfriend, Jenna, is off with Clay looking for his sister, so he takes advantage of the situation—and Bree—in a locked bedroom, where they engage in graphic sex. (There’s a lot of movement and moaning; audiences see Bree’s breasts and backside.) Trent crudely compliments critical parts of Bree’s body all the while.

Two other teens reveal their breasts before falling victim to Jason: One strips off her bra to entice her boyfriend into a round of sex inside a tent. (Again, a lot of graphic movement makes it onto the screen.) Another goes waterskiing topless.

Among other tawdry things, a guy asks a mannequin whether she (the mannequin) remembers when she took his virginity. Another fellow buys condoms and references masturbation. A guy prepares to masturbate while looking at a clothes catalog. The camera scans a pornographic magazine as someone appears to lick sections of a foldout. Several folks make crude and obscene comments to each other, including the sexualized suggestion of someone being willing to drink someone else’s urine. Obscene gestures are made. Women dance provocatively. Men ogle.

Violent Content

Audiences witness the movie’s first beheading before they’ve finished turning off their cell phones. The victim: Jason’s mom, who carved a bloody path through Crystal Lake counselors in the original film. We see the head’s bloody stump and hear the woman’s disembodied voice tell Jason, “Kill for mother.”

He does just that.

In 90 minutes, the hockey-masked killer guts 13 victims in (according to Fuller) “new and original ways that will satisfy even the most hard-core gore hound.”

Victim 1) Attacked while relieving himself. We later see his bloody body propped against a tree—and his ear hanging in a nearby marijuana plant.

Victim 2) Burned alive while hanging upside down in a sleeping bag. Eventually the body falls out of the bag, scorched and still smoldering.

Victim 3) Caught in a bear trap. He nearly escapes, but Jason plants the machete in the middle of his head.

Victim 4) Stabbed with the machete several times through the floorboards of a dilapidated cabin—eventually pulled by Jason into a gaping hole, still screaming, never to return.

Victim 5) Decapitated so that blood squirts out of neck. Jason later carries the headless body around the woods like a sack of sugar.

Victim 6) Shot through the head with an arrow.

Victim 7) Hit on head with speeding boat, then cut through the top of the head with the machete.

Victim 8) Skewered through neck and chin with a really sharp pointed instrument. Blood gushes.

Victim 9) Thwacked in the back with a double-sided ax. He’s still alive, so Jason finishes the job by pushing the ax all the way through his chest.

Victim 10) Impaled by a set of antelope antlers. Shot several times by clueless boyfriend.

Victim 11) Stabbed through the eye with what looks to be a fireplace poker.

Victim 12) Pinned through the chest to the back of a pickup with a machete.

Victim 13) Stabbed through the back and chest with a machete. (How many of those things does Jason own, anyway?)

And we haven’t even talked about the concluding scene yet, in which characters—who may or may not make it through the climax—are punched, kicked, stabbed, hung, thrown through bus windows, tossed into lakes and partially fed through wood chippers.

Crude or Profane Language

A teen wears a T-shirt that reads (partly censored), “F— Christmas.” And audiences hear the f-word (completely uncensored) more than 70 times. The s-word is said about 40 times. There are at least 10 misuses of God’s name (one linked with “d–n”) and five abuses of Jesus’ name.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Jason’s first batch of victims are on the hunt for a marijuana patch—which they find and subsequently die beside. Characters smoke from a huge, purple bong (nicknamed Lucille); puff on what could be cigarettes or joints; drink vast quantities of beer and liquor (including some from a used sneaker); play a few drinking games; and talk quite a bit about how drunk/high they are. There are consequences, of course: Jason hates nothing more than wasted teenagers.

Other noteworthy Elements

Teens urinate onscreen, make really crude references to critical anatomical parts and functions, and pick on brothers who are searching for their sisters.

Every now and then, someone will ask me—with a slightly worried, somewhat pitying look—”How do you sit through movies like, say, Friday the 13th ?”

Here’s one of my secrets: Rather than focusing on the brutality and the carnage and the really horrendous images onscreen, I begin to imagine the director had a deeper point to make behind it all—as if the shrieking, bleeding people onscreen are merely symbols for something entirely different. For instance, I imagine that Jason is a symbol of the economic recession, and the teens represent the struggling auto industry. Or perhaps Jason is Rosie O’Donnell and the teens are manifestations of her short-lived variety show. Or even that Jason is my brilliant, kindhearted but sharp-penned editor, and the teens are synonymous with the stories I submit to him.

Because, really, without resorting to such games, I have a hard time making it through 90 minutes of this sort of sordid mayhem. I know some people find this form of entertainment fun—I heard the audience chuckle several times during the screening—but I just don’t quite get it. This is a film that fetishizes brutality and aggrandizes murder. It treats victims like so much squealing cordwood, their deaths as carnival novelties. It’s not fun .

But maybe everybody does what I do to survive this stuff. Do hard-core gore hounds , as Brad Fuller so eloquently put it, really hate these images as much as I do, but they’re hooked on comparing Jason to a swarm of biblical locusts and his victims to the ancient Egyptians’ crops? Are they consciously distancing themselves from brutality by deliberately desensitizing themselves to it? I wish no one would go to these films. But they do. So I hope—no, I pray—that, if fans really got what was happening onscreen, they’d not find it fun at all.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Friday 13th Part II 4K UHD [Blu-ray] [Region A & B & C]

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Get ready for twice the terror with Friday the 13th Part 2! Five years after the massacre at Camp Crystal Lake, the nerve-wracking legend of Jason Voorhees and his diabolical mother lives on. Despite ominous warnings from the locals to stay away from “Camp Blood,” a group of counselors at a nearby summer camp decide to explore the area where seven people were brutally slaughtered. All too soon, they encounter horrors of their own and the killing begins again. You’ll be at the edge of your seat for this gruesome thriller about 24 hours of bone-chilling fear!

Product details

• Rated ‏ : ‎ Suitable for 18 years and over
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17 x 13.7 x 1.5 cm; 115 g
• Director ‏ : ‎ Steve Miner
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ 4K
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 27 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ 7 Oct. 2024
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Betsy Palmer, Amy Steel, John Furey, Adrienne King
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Paramount Home Entertainment
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0DD79R6VX
• 115 in Horror (DVD & Blu-ray)
• 138 in Thriller (DVD & Blu-ray)
• 522 in Blu-ray

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