All 12 Friday the 13th movies ranked from worst to best
For almost half a century Jason Voorhees has been the tentpole for the slasher genre. Let’s rank all Friday the 13th movies from worst to best!
In May of 1980, camping became a thing of abject terror. It wasn’t due to bears or other woodland creatures. It was because of Jason Voorhees. He has menaced Camp Crystal Lake for over 40 years, hunting, hacking, slashing, and making a general mess of things for anyone who dares to tread on his domain.
Originally conceived as a rip-off of Halloween, Friday the 13th took the premise of a silent killer hunting teenagers and ramped it up to 1000! Instead of a bloodless suspense-filled romp, we got tons of blood, gore, and viscera.
It has spawned 10 sequels, a remake, and even a prequel show coming to Peacock that’s being run by Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller. Despite all of the in-continuity films, there has been a slew of imitations that just never really live up to the original.
So let’s get right down to it. Let’s rank the Friday the 13th movies from worst to best!
12. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
When Friday the 13th left Paramount, the first thing anyone could talk about was “When are we getting Freddy vs Jason?” Now while that would still be in the wind for a while, we still needed a new installment of the ongoing legacy of Friday the 13th.
Enter Adam Marcus and what I feel is the absolute blackest mark on the franchise. Instead of the standard Jason Voorhees slasher movie where Jason comes back, people die, etc, he decided to add on a bunch of lore no one had asked for in the previous eight films. I mean why not wait nine movies to explain NEW things in a franchise? Makes perfect sense, right?
Throw in a cameo by the Necronomicon from Evil Dead and what I think is a Kandarian Dagger, sprinkle it with some Jason body jumping, add a dash of a bounty hunter who seems to know more about Jason than anyone else, and make sure to use just a pinch of a hockey mask and you have one of the most ridiculous things ever put to film.
When you have a formula that works you stick with it. You don’t suddenly decide that you want to change things late in the game when you were already winning.