Friday the 13th Movies Ranked

Jason movies aren’t supposed to be good. Heck, they weren’t even supposed to be about Jason. Back in the late 1970s, producer Sean S. Cunningham saw the financial success of Halloween and an opportunity to cash in himself. So he took out an ad for a movie called Friday the 13th, riffing on the holiday theme of the John Carpenter film.

Only later did he come up with the idea of a whodunnit, in which a killer begins menacing counselors trying to reopen a camp years after a youth named Jason Voorhees drowned there. As everyone now knows, that killer was Jason’s mother Pamela Voorhees, who wanted to prevent Camp Crystal Lake from over operating again. The shock ending of that film, in which Jason emerges from the water to grab a final girl, was only tacked on because Cunningham wanted to copy the shock ending of Carrie.

Creativity wasn’t the goal. Money was. And, to that end, Cunningham and Paramount Pictures succeeded, as Friday the 13th was a massive hit, as were its first few sequels. And yet, somehow, creativity happened nonetheless. In the second movie, Jason took the spotlight, supplanting his mother. And midway through the third movie, Jason got his signature mask, fully becoming a horror icon.

As you might expect, that digressive path resulted in films of varying quality. Not all of the Friday the 13th movies are great, but they all offer something worth watching—if only the grisly death of some camp counselor of ill-repute.

12. Friday the 13th (2009)

Who, exactly, is the 2009 remake Friday the 13th for? One would think that a reboot of the series would try to clarify the franchise’s famously ambling and imprecise timeline to make things easier for new viewers. Instead, the opening 30 minutes of Friday the 13th (2009) try to compress the first three films into one prologue, complete with killer Pamela (portrayed here by Nana Visitor of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame) and baghead Jason. The opening only confuses newcomers and feeds long-time fans insubstantial ‘member berries, pleasing no one–which accurately sums up the movie.

Which isn’t to say that the reboot doesn’t have its charms. Derek Mears is fantastic as a more feral Jason, trading dynamic energy for the usual slow-moving beast of previous films. The cast does a great job with its young adult jerks, and the movie pulls off a surprising final girl fake out. Still, Friday the 13th 2009 never shakes the feeling of being a fan film instead of a proper entry in the series.

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

For more than three and a half decades, people have been making fun of this movie for the fact that most of it takes place on a boat and the “New York” sections are actually Vancouver. And you know what? Jason Takes Manhattan deserves all that ridicule! Why give the eighth Friday the 13th entry that name if you’re never going to actually be in Manhattan (outside of some second unit stuff shot for the opening credits)?

Honestly, we could forgive a boat and we could forgive Canada if anything interesting happened in the movie. But, outside of a couple of cool kills, nothing does. Instead, Jason Takes Manhattan spends way too much time once again mythologizing the death of young Jason (which may or may not have happened, depending on the status of Fridays II, III, and IV). In the end, Jason Takes Manhattan succeeds at nothing: not drama, not horror, and not even taking Manhattan.

10. Friday the 13th Part III (1983)

Cunningham and Paramount knew that after the first two entries, Friday the 13th ran the risk of becoming rote and predictable. They knew they had to shake things up. However, they made perhaps the worst possible decision for the gimmick that would differentiate the series. They decided that Part III would be in 3-D.

Outside of that, everything in Part III covers familiar ground, from the group of counselors reopening the camp to the hicks who become early cannon fodder to a “shocker” ending, in which Pamela emerges from the lake to grab the final girl. And unless you’re using the flimsy blue and red 3D glasses that get distributed with modern releases, or unless you saw a special screening at a repertory theater, you’re watching all of this in 2-D, making the pointy bits annoying instead of compelling. At least Part III finally gives Jason his hockey mask. Outside of that, everything in this movie is a dud.

9. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Like Jason Takes Manhattan, Jason Goes to Hell doesn’t live up to a single part of its title. No, Jason doesn’t spend time in Hell in this movie. Instead, he’s skulking around a New Jersey town. No, it’s not the final Friday movie, as this list shows. Most shockingly of all, Jason isn’t even in Jason Goes to Hell, as he gets blown up by government agents in the cold open.

Instead, Jason Goes to Hell directly rips from The Hidden to introduce a bunch of nonsense lore about Jason being a demonic worm that can jump into other bodies. So instead of seeing Kane Hodder or any other big dude play Jason, we get to see Jason as character actors Richard Grant or Stephen Culp, hardly imposing figures. That said, Jason Goes to Hell commits so much to its absurd premise that it does provide some wacky fun for those who don’t get hung up on Friday the 13th lore.

8. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Freddy is the winner of Freddy vs. Jason. Yes, we all know that New Line Cinema wanted to keep the actual outcome of their monster mash ambiguous, letting Jason behead the Nightmare on Elm Street monster, but having Freddy give the camera a knowing wink at the end. But there’s no question that Freddy vs. Jason is an okay Freddy movie and a terrible Jason movie.

Sure, Jason gets in some cool kills and there is a part where he rips off Freddy’s arms and attacks him with them. But outside of that, director Ronny Yu’s hyper fight style and reliance on digital effects suit Freddy much better than they do Jason and, to his credit, Robert Englund has a blast reprising his signature role. All in all, Freddy vs. Jason manages to be a functional monster mash with a pretty coherent story. But if you’re here for Jason, you’ll be pretty disappointed.

7. Friday the 13th (1980)

As discussed earlier, the first Friday the 13th is little more than a rip off of Halloween with a little bit of Carrie. It doesn’t even get to call itself the best camp slasher of the era, as The Burning comes out next year. Instead, it’s a pretty by-the-numbers whodunnit with none of the flash or style of the Italian Giallo that precede it.

And yet, Friday the 13th does have two marks in its favor. First, the movie has an absolute ringer in Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees. She fully chews the scenery in her final scenes, convincingly pulling a reverse Norman Bates routine and channeling her son. Second, Friday the 13th has effects by Tom Savini, who gives the film a level of gore quality that, frankly, it doesn’t deserve. If the movie never went onto spawn any sequels, it would be remembered as a curio. Instead, it has to fall midway on a ranking in the franchise it started.

6. Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

Paramount tried to keep its word. The studio really did kill Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part IV. And when box office receipts made it clear that they couldn’t just ignore this profitable franchise, Paramount tried to go back to the drawing board. A New Beginning is another whodunnit with a new person doing the killing. Is it Jason, back from the dead? Is it Tommy Jarvis, the troubled boy who was sent to a juvenile home after killing the killer in the previous entry?

No, it’s Roy, an ambulance driver we see once at the start of the movie, who goes on a killing spree after his annoying son is murdered by a teen with an anger problem. That massive flub aside–and it is a big one–A New Beginning is actually kinda fun. And it has an all-timer of a kill sequence, thanks to the ever-reliable Miguel Nuñez Jr., an outhouse, and some burritos.

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

The biggest knock against Freddy vs. Jason is that it learned nothing from the far superior seventh entry in the franchise, in which Freddy fights Carrie White. Okay, it’s not really Carrie White, but teen Tina (Lar Park Lincoln) does have the same psychokinetic powers and parent issues as the famous character from the Stephen King novel and Brian DePalma film. On the orders of her unscrupulous therapist, Tina goes to Camp Crystal Lake for isolated study, and inadvertently brings Jason back from his watery grave.

From there on, The New Blood gives Jason plenty of room to do what he does best. As so often happens with the top entries on this list, censors did cut down a lot of the movie, which diminishes the shock of its best kill scenes. But even if we don’t get all the bloody gory, there’s something triumphant in watching Jason shove a weed eater into the therapist’s face.

4. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that this list would not exist without Friday the 13th Part 2. But that statement isn’t totally inaccurate either. Part 2 took everything good about its predecessor and did it better, actually giving us Jason in the flesh and an excellent final girl in Ginny (Amy Steel).

Moreover, Part 2 is the first example of what the franchise actually becomes. A bunch of teens come to the camp, and Jason (wearing a burlap bag instead of the hockey mask that would be his trademark) kills them in inventive, gory ways. Between the pure energy of the kills and an actually intelligent final girl in Ginny, Part II makes a strong case for Friday the 13th as a reputable series.

3. Jason X (2001)

If Friday the 13th Part 2 says that Jason deserves respect, then Jason X suggests maybe he doesn’t. And that’s a good thing. Jason X belongs the the long and strange line of horror movies that send their killers to space, and while that model has mixed results when it comes to the Leprechaun or Pinhead, it works perfectly with Jason.

Well, mostly perfectly. Jason X wants so very badly to be a Kevin Williamson or Joss Whedon movie, and its characters–and there are so many characters–can’t say anything without dripping it in snark. Yet, these annoyances aside, it’s hard not to cheer when uber-Jason takes the stage or when he’s killing people with space-age weapons and chemicals.

2. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Part VI: Jason Lives was Scream before Scream. Okay, okay, that’s going too far. But Part VI has a metatextual quality that both celebrates the ridiculousness of the franchise and locates it firmly within horror history. Jason Lives completes the Tommy Jarvis trilogy with yet another actor playing the part (Thom Matthews here), but it makes him into a proper Jason hunter and gives him a reason to accidentally resurrect the killer.

Better yet, the movie manages to balance clever quips with good kills. There’s, of course, the James Bond opening in which Jason throws a machete at the screen. But there’s also the pitch black joke when one kid, realizing that Jason is coming to get him, turns to another and asks, “So, what did you want to be when you grew up?” A genuinely smart Friday the 13th movie? Believe it or not, yes!

1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

It took four movies for Friday the 13th to get it right. But, man, did it get it really right! The Final Chapter is the platonic ideal of a slasher movie. It’s lean, it has interesting victims, and it has some incredible and memorable kills. It even has a great kid performance from Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis at his youngest and awesome Savini effects.

The plot of The Final Chapter isn’t anything special. Again, we have teens coming to party at the campground, at the same time that single mom Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman) arrives with her kids Trish (Kimberly Beck) and Tommy. But that sparse plot leaves room for some great kills and for the teens to distinguish themselves. I mean, when you have Crispin Glover as a slasher movie teen, you don’t need any plot. Sparse and simple, The Final Chapter is what every Friday the 13th movie should be.