Every movie is someone’s favorite movie. If you are a fan of the Friday the 13th franchise and see your personal favorite movie ranked at or near the bottom of this list…don’t take it personally. Every movie has value.
Spoilers for the series and individual films are unavoidable.
12. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
And Takes The Audience With Him
The only Friday movie we got in the 90s…Jason Goes to Hell fails to provide what fans want most in a Jason movie. Jason. It isn’t the last movie on this list that will commit that cardinal sin. For a franchise that receives outside criticism for being the same thing over and over…this ranking shows that the further the story veers from a masked killer wiping out camp counselors at Crystal Lake the less value it has.
Here Jason spends most of the movie possessing random people through passage of a parasitic demon…worm…after being blown up by a SWAT team in the opening scene. Only through an, until now, never referenced member of his bloodline can he be reborn as the hockey masked killer we all know and love…and only by a member of said bloodline can he finally be killed. Also there is a magical dagger. We are a long way from the little boy who drowned in a lake in 1957. Too far.
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11. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Jason Takes A Cruise
Budget problems stamped out any vision the filmmakers may have had for this one. What was sold as a Jason killing spree in the city that never sleeps ends up a Jason killing spree on a ship. This doesn’t have to be a deal breaker but unlikable characters and ridiculous plot (even relative to the story of a drowned child who returns as an adult to avenge the death of his mother…who died avenging the death of…her drowned child) make this an unmemorable entry to the franchise at best. At worst it is the one where a sewer full of toxic waste melts adult Jason back to his child form and that’s never explained one way or, when he’s walking around the franchise as an adult in future films, the other.
10. Jason X
Jason In Space
Unlike the last two movies this one knows what it is. It doesn’t have the budget to deliver more than a SyFy channel aesthetic…but it does at least have some occasional fun. These bottom three movies were the only Jason movies released between 1989 and 2001. It’s not that a big city (cough ship) setting, space ship setting and…um…body swapping story are terrible ideas in a vacuum…by Jason X, however, we’ve spent longer with Jason Voorhees not hanging around Camp Crystal Lake than we did with someone stalking around it through the first seven movies. At this point it’s hard to even recognize this as the same franchise that began as a mother trying to keep the camp where her son drowned closed by any means necessary.
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9. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
A Bad Start
This is the one with the Jason imposter. With a completely convoluted story that, once again, does not even give us Jason Voorhees…it was anything but a new beginning. The story of Roy, a paramedic who goes crazy after his secret son is murdered at a halfway house. By now the pattern of the movies being ranked low should be pretty clear. Roy takes on the Jason Voorhees persona to go on a killing spree against people who had nothing to do with his son’s death. Fan favorite character Tommy Jarvis returns from part 4…though he’s used as little more than a mostly silent red herring here. What elevates this above the bottom three is that it at least feels like a classic Friday movie. A seedier, filthier, more soft core porn version of a Friday movie…but a Friday movie nonetheless.
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8. Freddy vs. Jason
Place Your Bets
The long awaited crossover that slasher movie fans of the 1980s dreamt about…released long after the peak of either franchise. While it manages to feel like neither a Friday or a Nightmare movie…it is a perfectly watchable fan service installment of both. Jason is positioned as the sympathetic character of the two despite possessing the much bigger body count both in their histories and in this movie. It delivers on its promise of an epic battle (part looney tunes, part pro wrestling) and in a movie called Freddy vs. Jason I don’t know that you should have expected any more than that.
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7. Friday the 13th (2009)
Get Off His Lawn
One of the better entries in the horror reboot era of the 2000s. Friday 2009 benefits from returning the story to its roots. Finally, Jason Voorhees is back home at Camp Crystal Lake dispatching of any teens who happen into his domain. It’s easily the best-looking Friday movie…which actually works against it. As does the Michael Bay excess and bevy of unlikable dude bro characters. Still…this Jason is a more feral and capable version that provides true menace for a change. Taking elements from the first 4 Friday movies, this reboot could just slide in as one of the better sequels if they had thrown a 12 at the end of the title. By 2009 that’s all you could really ask for.
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6. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Jason vs. Dime Store Carrie
The story goes that Friday producers wanted to do a Freddy Kreuger crossover all the way back at Part VII in 1988. Unfortunately for them the Nightmare series was at its box office peak at the time so they had no interest. Still wanting to provide a viable challenger for Jason they created a Carrie knockoff for him to do battle with. That showdown doesn’t occur until the final minutes of the movie leaving a lot of time for some classic Jason escapades hacking his way through countless one-dimensional teenagers. The final fight has its moments but it’s the generous helping of Jason kills that set this one in the top half of the franchise.
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5. Friday the 13th Part III
In 3D…At The Time
Mostly famous for being the entry where Jason gets his iconic hockey mask…Part III also marks the first instance of a phenomena that would occasionally plague the franchise…introducing many characters that you simply don’t care whether they live or die (and some you actively wish Jason murder upon). Being only the third movie (and second to feature Jason as the antagonist) it didn’t take long for the franchise to go from the story of innocent teens who find themselves in a bad situation to being built around rooting for the villain. While this movie is a bit of a dip among the first four movies in the series it gets points for feeling like the previous, and setting the stage for, Friday movies we know and love.
4. Friday the 13th
Don’t Reopen That Camp
As an unabashed rip off of Halloween, the original Friday the 13th is a pretty darn good one. More of a whodunnit with great Tom Savini makeup and effects, Friday the 13th is a story of motherly love. If that mother was completely insane. Jason Voorhees is nothing more than a historical footnote whose death serves as the catalyst for a killing spree in this one. Taking center stage is the camp counselors looking to reopen the camp where the young Jason drowned many years earlier. Here we, finally in relation to this list, have a group of nice, happy, likable young people who have done nothing wrong except to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Friday is at it’s best when the setup is simple. This is one of only three movies in the series where camp counselors are actually the ones being brought to the killing floor. Though this time it’s by Jason’s mother Pamela Voorhees doing the killing. …Spoilers for Friday the 13th I guess.
3. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
It All Comes Together
The Final Chapter is many people’s favorite installment of the Friday franchise. I wouldn’t argue against it…the top three on this list are quite interchangeable. The fourth (not final) chapter in the series is where it not only finds its purest form but given it wildly goes off track as soon as the next movie, the only chapter that arguably feels quintessential. This is Jason at the height of his iconography. Disposable teens, likable leads (including the introduction of repeating protagonist Tommy Jarvis) and a seemingly unstoppable killing machine. It’s crazy to look over this list and see how few times they got all of those things in order. Beginning with a terrific hospital sequence and ending with Jason being dispatched (for real this time…kind of) The not so Final Chapter is a brisk walk through memorable kills and vintage Friday feel.
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2. Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives
Zombie Jason
If you were to show any Friday movie to a person who doesn’t like slasher movies…Jason Lives is the one that they’re most likely to enjoy. The self aware, intentionally humorous entry in the series, Part 6 works so well because it never makes Jason the butt of the joke. He’s still Jason, now in zombie form after being accidentally resurrected by a returning Tommy Jarvis, but he finds himself slicing through more absurd situations. We are back to camp counselors for the first time since Part 2…and this time (for the only time) with actual campers.
The dialogue is snappy, the commentary on the genre ahead of it’s time, and while it doesn’t always land it creates a much wittier and fun version of the world of Crystal Lake (now called Forrest Green…probably for insurance purposes). Tommy’s quest to find and kill Jason once and for all drives the movie forward with momentum others lack. In some ways, despite it being made 23 years before the reboot, Jason Lives still feels like the franchise’s most modern entry.
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1. Friday the 13th Part 2
Old Sack Head
Friday the 13th Part 2 is three quarters of a masterpiece. Is that enough to earn its spot atop this ranking? I’d argue it’s enough to earn it a spot high on any ranking. It’s not three quarters of a good movie…it’s not three quarters of a great movie. It’s three quarters of a masterpiece.
After an extended (too long) opening scene to used to recap the original film (and dispatch its sole survivor) we get the very best of this series. We get a franchise best final girl (Ginny Field) and by far the most likable potential victims. We get easily the best cat and mouse final act in this series (and one of the best in any slasher movie) and the most human yet terrifying version of Jason. Wearing a sack with one eyehole instead of his classic hockey mask look may be a strike against for some viewers but I find it just as if not more effective. This group of counselors is so likable that spending time with them before the slaughter is a treat. These are good people who you care about…and feel for when their number is up.
From the moment Jason is revealed through the final moments of the story we are treated to a breathless, genuinely scary, third act that no other chapter in the series can beat. It doesn’t quite stick the landing with an ambiguous ending that leaves you debating what was real and what wasn’t…but like I said…three quarters. With a script that smartly sets up every aspect of its final act and gives us an intelligent, resourceful protagonist…Part 2 provides what I’d argue is one of the finest hours in all of horror…it just does it in an 87 minute package.
