Jason Voorhees has been away for a long time, but we are finally on the cusp of a “Friday the 13th” renaissance. Between 1980 and 2009, there were no fewer than a dozen “Friday the 13th” movies, but the franchise has been silent since then, fan films and a popular online multiplayer video game notwithstanding.
But now he’s back. Well, sort of. Future “Friday the 13th” projects are part of a rebrand initiative called the “Jason Universe.” Much fanfare was made of Jason’s redesign, but the only noteworthy “Jason Universe” output so far has been a “Dead by Daylight” collaboration and a short film called “Sweet Revenge,” which doubles as a promo for Angry Orchard hard cider. However, a new TV series, “Crystal Lake,” is set to debut in October 2026 on Peacock, and will mark the proper first step in this new evolution of the franchise.
While we eagerly await the return of Jason Voorhees, let’s take a look at his filmography to date and rank every “Friday the 13th” film from worst to best.
12 – Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Hollywood, especially in the 1980s, ran on what we call “the law of diminishing returns.” A series may start out popular, but as it goes on, it gets harder to come up with new ideas and the audience gradually loses interest. In an attempt to breathe new life into a franchise, the producers come up with gimmicks to make the latest entry stand out. For 1989’s “Friday the 13th Part VII,” the gimmick was to set Jason Voorhees loose in the Big Apple, the City that Never Sleeps, the greatest city in the world, New York City.
At least, that was the plan. In reality, only one scene in the whole film, set in Times Square, was actually shot on location. Most of the New York scenes were actually shot in Toronto, which is a nice city, but it ain’t NYC. As a result, some franchise fans call the movie, “Jason Takes Toronto.” Even worse, most of the film isn’t even set in New York, but on the boat ride there (don’t worry about the geography, it doesn’t make sense). This has led fans to derisively refer to the film as “Jason Takes a Cruise.” There’s also the bizarre ending, which acts as something of a “series finale” to the saga of Jason Voorhees, but which went entirely ignored by sequels.
All that being said, “Part VII” isn’t entirely without merit. It’s got some delightful kills, like Jason punching a guy’s head off (which, in a genuinely beautiful shot, falls off a roof and lands in a dumpster, which then slams shut), drowning a guy in a conspicuously placed barrel of raw sewage, and bludgeoning a musician with her own guitar. And who can forget the moment where Jason kicks a boombox and scares the heck out of the street punks by taking off his mask? It’s absurd and silly, but the kind of campy antics the series needed more of by this point.
11 – Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
After the failure of “Part VII,” Paramount sold the rights to the Jason Voorhees character to New Line Cinema, who brought the series back in 1993 with “The Final Friday,” which, as the title suggested, promised to kill of Jason for good… Sort of.
“Jason Goes to Hell” is, hands down, the weirdest entry in the series. Jason, as we traditionally know him, is hardly present in the film. In a shocking prologue twist, he’s literally blown to bits by the FBI, but his essence (through a gross little slug) lives on by possessing people and hopping to new bodies to continue killing. The new direction comes from director Adam Marcus, who was only 25 years old when the film released, and had some wild ideas for the franchise. Perhaps due to the New Line Cinema connection, “Jason Goes to Hell” clandestinely utilizes the Necronomicon and Kandarian dagger from “The Evil Dead” to suggest that Jason was revived by his mother using the dark magic of the Book of the Dead from that film.
As mentioned before, “Jason Goes to Hell” is weird. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it misses. I always admire a big swing, and heaven knows “Friday the 13th” needed a new angle for the first film after “Jason Takes Manhattan.” But did it have to be this angle? Did Jason Voorhees need a mystical mythology? I have to admit, I don’t mind the “Evil Dead” connection, but a “Friday the 13th” movie where Jason and his iconic hockey mask only appear in the prologue and ending feels like a waste of the entire concept. I’m all for messing with the formula, but when a slasher movie revival is scarcely recognizable as an entry of its own franchise, that’s a bridge too far. At least the kills are gory, especially in the unrated Extended Cut.
10 – Friday the 13th Part III
Every few decades, 3-D movies make a resurgence. In the 1950s, movies like “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “Dial M for Murder” made use of an early form of the technology. In 2009, James Cameron’s “Avatar” ushered in a new era of 3-D filmmaking. However, in between those two eras, the 1980s saw a brief resurgence in 3D movies. Alas, many of those 1980s 3-D films sucked. Still, even among duds like “Amityville 3-D” and “Jaws 3-D,” “Friday the 13th Part III” stands out as being particularly bad.
However, if you look at “Part III” as a “so bad it’s good” kind of movie, there’s some fun to be had. There are so many 3-D shots that look completely out of place when viewed in 2-D, you could make a drinking game out of it, but then you’d pass out before the end of the movie. It’s absolute shame the film has yet to receive a proper 3-D Blu-ray release. Anaglyph 3-D just doesn’t cut it in this day and age.
As for the film itself, there’s not much to say, though this is the entry where Jason finally gains his iconic hockey mask, establishing a look that continues to define the character to this day. Aside from that, though, the kills aren’t particularly memorable, save for how bad they look due to the 3-D gimmick. I concede, I’ve never seen “Friday the 13th Part III” in 3-D. Maybe it’s a masterpiece in that format that completely immerses the viewer and transforms the film in a way a 2-D watch could never hope to capture. But I seriously doubt that’s actually the case.
9 – Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
After “Friday the 13th Part VI,” the franchise was pretty much done. “Part IV” was literally called “The Final Chapter,” so how do you follow that? “Part V” tried to move on with a new killer, but audiences rejected it, so “Part VI” brought him back. What could they do next? “Part VII: Jason’s Still Here?” Instead, the producers came up with the logline of “Jason vs Carrie” and went from there.
The series’ default protagonist, Tommy Jarvis, was dropped from “Part VII” in favor of a new hero, Tina Shepard, who has inexplicable telekinetic powers that she uses to fight Jason as he kills off her friends, one by one. Unfortunately, the main appeal of a “Friday the 13th” movie is the gory kills, and this is one area where “The New Blood” falters. It was the 1980s, and the MPAA was pushing back against violent slashers. Even compared to the relatively tame “Jason Lives,” this one just feels like a TV edit of itself. Even so, the sleeping bag kill is still an all-timer.
As for the positives, fan-favorite Kane Hodder makes his debut as Jason, and he was born to play the role. He’s big, he’s scary, and he brings a lumbering physicality to Jason that is just fun to watch. It all culminates in an epic final battle between Jason and Tina, where she drops a house on him, sets him on fire (in a record-breaking fire stunt performed by Hodder himself), and ultimately summons the spirit of her dead father to trap Jason underwater forever… Or until “Jason Takes Manhattan.” Egads, maybe he should have stayed at the bottom of the lake.
8 – Jason X
By 2002, it had been nearly a decade since the last “Friday the 13th” movie. “Freddy vs Jason” was in some form of development during that time, but progress was slow, so “Friday the 13th” co-creator Sean S. Cunningham put a new movie into production, one that wouldn’t get in the way of whatever story might be told by “Freddy vs Jason.” Thus, the decision was made to set the movie in the future. The far, far future. IN SPACE!
Yeah, this is the one where Jason goes to outer space. At the time, the film was a box office bomb, with fans rejecting the core concept of “Jason in Space,” its campy tone, and its iffy production values. Over time, however, the movie became something of a cult classic for exactly those reasons. Put simply, “Jason X” is a silly movie. It’s campy, bizarre, and fun, and I ask: what’s wrong with that? Sure, some of the special effects look pretty dated in 2026, and others didn’t pass muster back in 2002, but for a movie with a budget of just $14 million, it could have been way worse. Some of the outer space scenes look great, and the design of Uber Jason, a sci-fi cyber-enhanced version of Jason, is gloriously goofy.
“Jason X” also makes great use of its setting, with science fiction-tinged kills galore, as well as one that pays homage to the sleeping bag kill from “The New Blood.” Even among the film’s detractors, franchise agree that the liquid nitrogen face-smash kill is one of the greatest kills, not just in “Friday the 13th,” but in all of horror history.
7 – Friday the 13th Part II
“Friday the 13th” was a pretty self-contained movie, not the kind of film that easily lent itself to a direct sequel. In fact, the original idea was to make it an anthology series, with “Friday the 13th” as a brand under which unique horror stories could be told. However, given the response to the shocking jump scare at the end of the first film and the opportunity to build a sequel from there, the decision was made to make a direct sequel, instead.
“Friday the 13th Part II” begins several months after the end of the original, and opens by killing off the ‘final girl’ of the original film, Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) and establishing a new status quo. Jason is no longer a little boy, but a grown man, a hulking brute (and, as “The Final Friday” suggests, possibly a product of the Necronomicon’s demonic magic), and an efficient killer.
“Part II” ups the ante with creative kills, my favorite being Mark, the wheelchair-bound teen, whose disability doesn’t earn him any mercy from Jason. Instead, he gets a machete to the face and then he and his wheelchair tumble down a comically large flight of stairs. A runner-up kill would be Jeff and Sandra, a copulating couple who die together via a spear through both of their bodies. It’s like a supercharged version of Kevin Bacon’s ‘arrow through the neck’ kill in the original, and a great juxtaposition of sex and violence that would come to define slasher films of the era.
6 – Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning
“Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter,” closed the book on the story of Jason Voorhees, killing him off and leaving poor little Tommy Jarvis traumatized by the ordeal. In order to indicate that the next film would be a fresh start, this entry was given the unsubtle subtitle of “A New Beginning.” This time, the killer was a copycat who dressed in a similar (but not identical) hockey mask as Jason.
Despite having a massive body count and some inventive kills, fans rejected the film at the time, resulting in the weakest box office performance since “Part II.” Despite the return of Tommy Jarvis and the presence of a masked killer brutalizing expendable young people, it just wasn’t the same without Jason Voorhees. To those fans, “Part V” felt like an ersatz knockoff of a “Friday the 13th” movie. It’s a shame, too, since I actually really like “A New Beginning.” Even though the kills were trimmed by the MPAA, they’re still grisly enough, especially the one where the guy gets his head crushed through the eyes by a belt tightened around a tree. Who comes up with these? They deserve a medal, and maybe some therapy.
“The Final Chapter” also solidifies Tommy Jarvis as the de facto hero of the series, all grown up and ready to do battle with Jason before ultimately being possessed by the very evil he was hunting. At least, that’s what the ending implies, but that is completely dropped by “Part VI,” which goes in a decidedly different direction (but we’ll get to that later).
5 – Freddy vs Jason
The reason the 1990s were mostly devoid of Jason Voorhees was because New Line Cinema was trying to figure out how to properly crossover the franchise with “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” which was teased by the final scene in “Jason Goes to Hell.” Well, in 2003, we finally got “Freddy vs Jason,” and it was (mostly) worth the wait.
While some fans were disappointed by recasting Jason with a new actor, Ken Kirzinger, over fan-favorite Kane Hodder, Ken is a towering, hulking presence that contrasts strongly with Robert Englund’s skinny, smarmy Freddy Krueger. Without going over the plot of the film, let me just say that it’s a crowd-pleasing romp with lots of nods to the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise that uses Jason mostly as a blunt instrument of murder within Freddy’s scheme than a proper character of his own, though that’s mostly how he’s used in the “Friday the 13th” movies, so it doesn’t feel like he’s underused. Perhaps to make up for his lesser characterization, Jason is given some awesome kills, with standouts being folding a man in half in his bed (after stabbing him countless times with his machete, of course) and cleaving the stoner character in two with one righteous swing of his machete.
However, like with “The New Blood,” the real draw here is the final showdown. But instead of a “Carrie” knock-off, Jason goes toe-to-toe with Freddy, and their battle lives up to the hype, with gallons of blood being spilled, some high-flying stunts, and a tongue-in-cheek sensibility that encourages the audience to laugh and cheer as the mayhem unfolds. Director Ronny Yu brings a unique style to the film, and that style might not be to everyone’s tastes, but it certainly gives “Freddy vs Jason” its own visual identity, and that’s worth praising, even if it’s not your particular cup of tea.
4 – Friday the 13th (2009)
To date, the final “Friday the 13th” film is the 2009 remake from Michael Bay’s production house, Platinum Dunes. This film takes its cues from the studio’s prior “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake (even enlisting director Marcus Nispel), opting for a gritty-but-slick presentation that utilizes high production value to combine gloss and gore.
“Friday the 13th” makes use of a clever and trashy plot device that I can’t help but adore. The first act introduces a whole roster of characters only to kill them all 20 minutes in before showing the opening title card. Then we get a new set of characters who play the proper main cast of the film. Yeah, it’s the same trick Tarantino used in “Death Proof” (and he wasn’t the first, of course), but I love it.
This version of Jason isn’t a lumbering Frankenstein, but a ruthless hunter, and his kills carry a vicious efficiency. We get machetes to the face, flying axes to the back, and a girl trapped in her sleeping bag strung up over a fire and cooked like a marshmallow (or a beef Wellington, I suppose). This version of Jason is fast, mean, and scarier than he’d been in decades. For better or worse, “Friday the 13th” 2009 isn’t campy or tongue-in-cheek, but all the tropes of the 1980s slasher craze played completely straight-faced with sincerity and self-seriousness. It might not work for everyone, but as a back-to-basics reinterpretation of “Friday the 13th,” this remake does exactly what it set out to do.
3 – Friday the 13th
If you didn’t start out with the original, it can be jarring to go back to the first “Friday the 13th.” The 1980 original was made of a budget of barely half a million dollars, and it shows. It’s got a cheapness that enhances the horror, not unlike Sam Raimi’s 1981 “The Evil Dead,” where you’re lured into a sense of campy, low-budget corniness before hitting you with some shockingly scary kills, courtesy of makeup/special effects legend Tom Savini and a whole lot of fake blood. It’s also got one of the greatest endings in horror history, complete with a legendary jump scare. If you somehow don’t know it, I won’t spoil it for you.
But most of all, “Friday the 13th” is notable for being a murder mystery film. There was no ‘formula’ yet. Jason is a non-entity here, part of the backstory, not a character on his own. When people start getting killed, nobody knows who is doing it or why. The reveal of Pamela Voorhees as the murderer is played as a shocking twist. At the time, the only hint that she was the killer was the fact that she was played by Betsy Palmer, easily the most famous person in the cast at the time.
However, there is one huge mark against the film. The gritty, grimy feel of “Friday the 13th” came from a very real place and had nasty consequences. If you’re an animal lover, do not watch this film. In the scene where a snake is killed, the filmmakers used a real snake trained as an animal performer and hacked it to pieces with a real machete. The on-screen death of the snake is real. Even in a movie about a psycho serial killer, real death should ever play a part in bringing a film story to life. There are moral lines in filmmaking that should never be crossed, and, sadly, “Friday the 13th” crosses that line.
2 – Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
After audiences rejected “A New Beginning,” the decision was made to bring Jason back from the dead in “Part VI: Jason Lives.” The filmmakers were met with a bit of a conundrum. How can they maintain the seriousness of the franchise while bringing Jason back to life? The answer was, they didn’t. They decided to go full camp with this one, stopping just short of making the film an outright comedy.
The film opens with Tommy Jarvis attempting to burn Jason’s body and make sure that his dead body stays dead. But like Frankenstein’s monster, a bolt of lightning shocks Jason back to life, and the killing begins anew, but with a campier tone. This feels like the first “Friday the 13th” movie where you’re genuinely supposed to root for Jason and his creative kills. He’s an artist and murder is his canvas.
Adding to the campy tone is the opening titles sequence, which pays homage to the 007 ‘gun barrel’ opening, but with Jason swinging his machete. The film also gave Jason a theme song, “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)” by Alice Cooper. In the wake of a Jason-less “Friday the 13th Part V,” the filmmakers finally realized that Jason was the true star of these movies, and “Jason Lives” fully locked him in as an immortal horror mascot.
1 – Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter
While some prefer the populist sensibilities of “Jason Lives,” others prefer the more serious tone of the earlier films, of which “Part IV: The Final Chapter” is the culmination. This is the first film in the series where Jason is fully formed as the killer we know and fear. As the title suggests, this was supposed to be the end of the series, a promise which coaxed Tom Savini to return to the series, especially since he’d get to handle the makeup for the death of Jason, which is horrific and fantastic.
Another boon for the film is the supporting cast. This is one of the only “Friday the 13th” movies where the fodder teens are actually enjoyable to watch when they’re not getting ripped apart by Jason, especially since there are multiple scenes of skinny dipping. Hubba Hubba! Bonus points for including Crispin Glover as one of the unlucky victims. Corey Feldman also delivers an excellent performance as the original Tommy Jarvis, here just a young boy who actually gets to deliver the killing blow against Jason. And then he keeps on hacking at Jason’s corpse. It’s pretty disturbing stuff, and Feldman commits to the performance, easily outpacing co-stars twice his age.
Kane Hodder might be the fan-favorite, but Ted White is my personal favorite Jason Voorhees performer. He’s barrel-chested, but fast and feral, not dissimilar to the 2009 remake version of the character. He feels more dangerous than most versions of Jason, and the movie is all the better for it. Even if you’re not a horror fan, “The Final Chapter” is worth a watch. If you only ever watch a single “Friday the 13th” movie, make it this one. At the very least, Rob screaming, “He’s killing me!” is a horror moment you’ll never forget. I’d go so far as to say it’s my favorite moment in any “Friday the 13th” movie.
