Today is Friday the 13th and that means it is time to look back on one of horror’s most beloved franchises! (No one stans like a Jason Voorhees stan.) That’s right, I am here with my definitive and absolutely correct ranking of every single Friday the 13th film, starting with the best and ending with the worst! So if teenagers and college kids getting brutally murdered in the woods by an unstoppable killing machine is your bag, it’s time to grab your machetes, zip up your coveralls, put on your hockey mask, and kiss your mother’s severed head goodbye because we have a bloody, bloody business ahead of us!
1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
The pinnacle of the entire franchise, The Final Chapter is Friday the 13th at its very best. They brought back the legendary horror effects artist Tom Savini and so this film has not only the most iconic Jason face, but also some of the best kills in the entire franchise. It also stars Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, beginning a trilogy that positions Jarvis as Jason’s greatest, or at least most consistent, foe. The final sequence, in which Jarvis transforms himself into a monster in order to trick Jason (and ultimately kill him) sounds like a silly premise but Feldman pulls it off and the results are surprisingly creepy and unsettling. The film overall manages to strike the perfect balance between comedy and terror, the juxtaposition of tones that the franchise becomes known for. Plus it’s the one with the Crispin Glover dance scene. That alone should give it the top spot.
2. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
One of the most comedic Jason films (it literally includes a Jason doing a James Bond 007 credit sequence homage), it also marks the beginning of decaying, zombie Jason. It’s also the only film in the entire franchise based around a summer camp that has actual kids at the camp! It also marks the end of the Tommy Jarvis saga, which is maybe for the best considering in this film poor Tommy is responsible for accidentally reanimating Jason’s corpse! Oopsy!Â
3. Friday the 13th Part II (1981)
The first actual Jason movie! Part II gives us redneck, bag head Jason, which not gonna lie, is kind of a serve for him. It also introduces a lot of classic, iconic Friday the 13th moments, like Mrs. Voorhees’ severed head on a special little altar. Not only does it have some really good kills (a couple getting impaled with a spear while boning down is classic slasher business), but it also has Ginny, (played by Amy Steel), who is arguably the best “final girl” in the franchise. She’s smart, resourceful, and has the guts to put on the sweater of Jason’s dead mom!Â
4. Friday the 13th (1980)
The one that started it all! While Halloween (1978) was perhaps the first real slasher film, Friday the 13th established a lot of the classic slasher tropes and archetypes still in place today. And Jason doesn’t even appear until the final scene! More of a whodunnit than any of the other films (except for A New Beginning maybe), it has not one, but two twists! The first is the reveal that Jason’s mom Pamela Voorhees is the real killer (trying to get revenge on the camp that killed her son back in 1957), and the second is that Jason is still alive! Or is he! The final scene of a deformed Jason leaping out of the water Flipper style to grab Alice from the boat may have just been a dream sequence (or was it), cemented Friday the 13th and slashers as an important part of the horror genre. Also, baby Kevin Bacon is one of the horny camp counselors that gets got!
5. Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
The Friday film that introduces Jason’s iconic hockey mask! Set immediately after the events of the second film, it involves a new set of young adults that have arrived at Crystal Lake to stay in their friends’ family’s cabin. Trying to get in on the re-burgeoning 3D craze, the film’s 3D effects are hilariously ludicrous and include a large 3D joint being passed to the audience and Jason crushing one of the kids heads with his bare hands until an eyeball pops out at the screen. It also introduces one of my favorite characters in the whole franchise: Shelly Finkelstein. Shelly is the annoying yet loveable horror movie buff and nerdy prankster (and has big Knocked Up Seth Rogen energy) who inadvertently gives Jason his signature hockey mask. And by that, I mean Jason murders him and takes it off his body. RIP to one of the greats!
6. Jason X (2002)
Yes, the one where Jason goes to space! Super underrated, (in my humble opinion), the film is a camp classic! Jason is cryogenically frozen and wakes up almost 500 years in the future. A truly incredible premise. It involves: Jason in a scary metal future suit, Jason on a holodeck, and Jason killing people with liquid nitrogen – what’s not to love! It ends with him crashing onto a new planet that looks exactly like 1960s Earth, leaving the franchise with an untaken path forward. Honestly, people really did not like this one, but I love the silliness, and it came out in a time where the franchise (much like current beloved action franchise Fast and Furious), had nowhere left to go but to space! Plus David Cronenberg has a cameo role. Perfection.
7. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
Another underrated sequel, A New Beginning often gets denigrated for taking Jason out of the picture. Instead, much like the title suggests, it takes the franchise back to its roots, with the characters trying to solve the mystery of who is committing the murders. Set in a home for troubled youth, most think it is Tommy Jarvis, now a teenager, who has seemingly been driven insane by the events of The Final Chapter. Tommy is convinced that Jason has come back to life to get revenge. Audiences were upset when it was revealed that the killer was actually Roy, the EMT at the beginning of the film, who wanted vengeance after the home allowed his boy to be brutally murdered by another youth (the very first kill in the movie.) A parent driven to homicidal rage because of the negligence of an establishment meant to protect their children? That’s a Friday the 13th movie baby.
It’s definitely the meanest and sleaziest film of the franchise, it was actually directed by Danny Steinmann, a porn director. As a result, there is a lot of gratuitous nudity and a lot of not great acting. But it also has a bizarre redneck couple (another red herring for the murders), and Dudley from Diff’rent Strokes as one of the final survivors!
8. Friday the 13th (2009)
A reboot that takes the greatest hits from films 1 through 3 and remixes them into a new telling of the story. It isn’t the most exciting film in the franchise, and certainly not the most exciting reinvention or reboot, but it does have one of the great Jason designs, and it hits all the beats of a Friday the 13th film, even if it is just mostly taking those beats from the original movies and rearranging them a bit. Supernatural fans will get a kick though, because Sam Winchester himself (Jared Padalecki) is in this movie as the Final Boy.
9. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
The one that breaks my heart. The idea of Jason Voorhees running around 1980s New York City and wreaking havoc is such an excellent premise and the movie almost completely fails to deliver. Two thirds of the film takes place on the boat to Manhattan. And if you are wondering how a boat that seemingly boards on a lake in New Jersey manages to sail to Manhattan, well that is not even the wildest leap in logic in the film! It ends with the very normal and regular occurrence of New York’s sewers flooding with toxic waste, waste that transforms zombie Jason… back into a regular human child.
Overall the film makes about as much sense as that magical boat ride and toxic waste, and is ultimately pretty disappointing. When Jason does finally get to Manhattan he wreaks no havoc! There is a scene where he chases the teens through a crowded subway train… and no one dies? Madness. It does have, however, one of the very best kills of the entire series, in which Julius engages Jason in a round of good ol’ fisticuffs and boxes him across several rooftops. Unfortunately for Julius, the fight ends when Jason quite literally punches his head off. If the entire movie were like that scene it would get the number one spot. Alas.
10. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
Another mostly Jason-less Jason film, Jason Goes to Hell begins with the FBI luring Jason into an ambush where they essentially explode him. From there, a county coroner decides to eat Jason’s still-beating heart, which then causes Jasons soul to possess him. Jason then proceeds to kill people and hop bodies via his weird black goo. Another enticingly ludicrous premise that goes nowhere and also does not actually show us Jason in Hell. The only good part of the film is character actor Steven Williams as Creighton Duke, the bounty hunter that discovers only someone of the Voorhees bloodline can kill him for good. Which of course, in a rip-off of Halloween II, reveals that Jason has a secret sister. Duke has some good one-liners and the “hell baby” meant to represent Jason’s demon soul is pretty fun once it’s revealed, it ultimately is just not a real Friday the 13th movie. Also the final scene, in which Jason is pulled into hell by Freddy Kreuger’s gloved hand, a misguided attempt at fan-service that leads us to the worst film on the list, with one quick stop!Â
11. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
Part VII had a lot of things going against it. By 1988 they were really struggling with where to take the series, and in an attempt to capitalize on the “telepath” trend they came up with a concept that was essentially Jason vs. Carrie. Another concept with a lot of promise and a disappointing result. Part of that is due to an uninspired story, but a lot of it also has to do with the MPAA. In the late eighties the MPAA began really cracking down on horror films and depictions of violence in movies, and as a result they forced The New Blood to cut out every single drop of blood. Yup, they took the blood out of a slasher! The end product is a Jason film with very disappointing kills, most of which take place off-screen, or are cut right before any of the fun stuff can occur. Unfortunately, with the exception of a couple very low-quality VHS moments, most of these cut scenes have now been lost forever. It’s a bummer! On the upside, it did introduce Kane Hodder’s Jason (he would go on to play Jason in the next 3 films), who is now considered most fans’ favorite take on the role.
12. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Perhaps a controversial choice, but this is a movie that is more about Freddy than it is Jason! Which is to say, if this were a Nightmare on Elm Street ranking, it would go much higher than last place, but it’s not! We are talking Jason flicks, and this is a Jason flick that does him a great disservice. After all, this is the film that decided Freddy Kreuger was going to manipulate Jason by using Jason’s fear of water! Fear of water? Yes, Jason has drowned (a few times), but nowhere in any of the other previous films has Jason been afraid of anything, let alone water. In fact, Jason swims and dives in many of the films in order to surprise his victims! Even when he is chained to the bottom of the lake, he just chills there, patiently waiting. Directed by Hong Kong action director Ronny Yu, it does follow in the grand tradition of Jason films not living up to expectations. I will give it that.
(Images: Paramount)
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