Sean Cunninghams’ original Friday the 13th film started with nothing more than a poster. The director took out an ad in Variety before he had even penned a script claiming the movie to be “The most terrifying film ever made.”

While Friday the 13th may not have lived up to the sensational headline, it did launch a twelve-film franchise and spinoff TV series. The Friday the 13th series is one of cinema’s most beloved horror franchises. The original film introduced audiences to Camp Crystal Lake and later entries created the mythos of Jason. A helpless child who died due to neglect and is out to exact revenge on any horny teenager he comes across.

Friday the 13th The Final Chapter: The Best Friday the 13th Film

The Final Chapter is the fourth film in the franchise but the best to date. Notably, The Final Chapter introduced Tommy as a young Corey Feldman. Tommy’s character would continue in several more films, but his role here is the best in the series.

The Final Chapter was meant to conclude the Friday the 13th series but the film performed so well that a sequel was quickly greenlit. It’s hard to argue with the film’s success as it contains the strongest story, some of the best scares, and Crispin Glover giving a signature Crispin Glover performance.

Friday the 13th Part 7 The New Blood: Tina vs Jason

Friday the 13th Part 7 pits Jason against Tina Shepard, a trauma-entured young woman with telekinetic abilities. Part 7 stands out for its ability to lean into the camp and silliness of the Friday the 13th series. What started as a teen summer camp slasher series had turned into full-on madness, with Jason being killed and reborn more times than one could count.

It was wise then for the directors to lean hard into the campy elements of Friday the 13th. There had already been talks of a Freddy vs Jason but that wouldn’t materialize for a few more years. Instead, the directors went with a Jason vs Carrie approach, pitting the immortal teen killer against a telekinetic female teen. The result is short on scares but big on entertainment. Part 7 is one of the best films in the entire franchise.

Friday the 13th (1980): The Original Classic

Friday the 13th features Kevin Bacon, a vengeful mother, and a whole lot of dead teenagers. The original film purposefully wrong-foots the audience. Telling the audience the story of a neglected child out for revenge only to reveal it was his mother all along.

It’s a strong reveal that still works well in horror cinema today. The film introduces unbelievable elements and then recontextualizes everything we’ve just seen into a plausible conclusion. It also contains one of the best jump scare moments of all time.

Friday the 13th (2009) A Succesful Reboot

After ten entries and a crossover with Freddy, the series made the wise decision to start again. The final films in the original series had gone truly bonkers with Jason ending up in Hell, space, and Elm Street. Original director Sean Cunningham returned to produce this reboot that acts as an homage to the series and a worthy addition to the franchise.

Friday the 13th (2009) doesn’t try to retell the story of the original film. Instead, we get a movie that features kids at a lake getting picked off one by one by the masked murderer Jason. The movie tries to act as a quasi-sequel to the original, ignoring all the films in between. It was a smart choice but one that didn’t have enough staying power to create a new franchise. Still, the 2009 reboot is a fun film that presents the story of Jason to modern audiences.

Freddy vs Jason: An Epic Battle Between Iconic Cinema Slashers

Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th are two of the more iconic franchises in slasher cinema. A crossover of the series had been in talks since the 80’s but it was finally accomplished in 2003.

At this point in the franchise, both horror icons had become parodies of their original selves. Each series had gotten more and more bonkers so a meetup between the two acts more as fan service than a traditional horror movie. Even though the film is light on scares it still delivers a fun story and plenty of fan service. Freddy vs Jason is also the highest-grossing film in the Friday the 13th series, scoring over 100 million at the box office in 2003.

Friday the 13th Part 2: Jason’s Introduction to the Slasher Scene

The second film in the series is the first to feature Jason in the role of horny teen murderer. While his iconic mask wouldn’t come until the next movie, Part 2 is still a solid film that is great to revisit today.

Friday the 13th Part 2 picks up immediately where the first film left off. Jason sees his mother get beheaded and immediately enacts revenge on the final girl from the first film. The film then takes us five years into the future as a Camp Crystal Lake adjacent camp is set to open. Jason takes up his mother’s mantle, ensuring any unattentive counselors get their comeuppance. It’s a fun film and while not the best in the series, is a far cry from some of the wilder entries we’d get later on.

Friday the 13th Part 3: Jason Dons the Iconic Mask and Enters the Third Dimension

Friday the 13th Part 3 was released in 1982 and jumped on the increasingly popular 3D trend. The film is most notable as the first in the series to feature Jason in his iconic mask.

While it is a treat to finally see Jason put on his mask, there is little else compelling in this third entry. The kills are stale and the film relies heavily on 3D. Watching it today is difficult because of the amount of scenes where an object shoots right at the camera. Fortunately, the series improved with the next entry, keeping Jason alive for years to come.

Friday the 13th Part 6 Jason Lives:

Part 6 is the last film to feature the character of Tommy Jarvis and brings an end to his fight with Jason. The last film in the Tommy Jarvis arc isn’t his worst outing but it does feature the worst actor to take on the Tommy Jarvis name.

Tommy spends more time in the movie flirting with the local sheriff’s daughter than fighting Jason. The plot boils down to a standard “no one believes me” story that works well enough but isn’t compelling for the entire film’s runtime.

Jason X: The Final Frontier

The last canonical film in the Friday the 13th series takes Jason far into the future and far into space. Jason X was released in 2002, almost ten years after the last entry, and is a stark departure from the films that came before.

Jason X finds Jason waking up from cryogenic freezing four hundred years in the future by a group of humans and androids. He then does what he does best. Murder teenagers. Only this time it’s in space. It’s a testament to just how bonkers this series gets that Jason X isn’t the most outlandish of the film. Sure, the movie is campy and bizarre, but there is still some charm to be found in this early 2000s horror movie.

Friday the 13th Part 8 Jason Take Manhattan: Out of the Lake and into the City

Part 8 is a wild entry to the series as it features Jason running around New York City randomly killing muggers and other city dwellers. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of the series and one that feels out of place the killer. The most entertaining portions of the film are the parts featuring Jason in Manhattan. But it takes a grudgingly long time for Jason to get there. He spends most of his time on a small cruise ship, killing off patrons before finally landing in the city.

The filmmakers also felt the need to tie his resurrection into the beginning as they had done in the past. By the eighth entry, audiences didn’t need any exposition up front. They could have just dropped Jason in Manhattan and said “He’s in New York now!” There is some fun to be had with the last twenty minutes, but most of the film is a slog.

Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday: A Wild Reimagining of Jason Vorhees

Jason Goes to Hell has a wild origin story. This is the first film in the series to be produced by New Line Cinema, not Paramount, as the studios were trying to greenlight a Freddy vs Jason film. New Line was able to use the Jason character but not the Friday the 13th name. The original script centered around Jason’s father eating his dead son’s heart and gaining his powers. That script was unintelligible and Dean Lorey was brought in to write a script in four days for the movie we received.

In The Final Friday Jason spends his time killing teenagers and soul-jumping between others. Apparently, Jason can do that now. The whole film is filled with strange supernatural elements that are far more weird than the elements in the Tommy Jarvis chapters. It’s a crazy movie and doesn’t hold up as well as the other crazy movies in Jason’s film franchise.

Friday the 13th A New Beginning: The Worst Film in the Franchise

A New Beginning is such an odd entry in the Friday the 13th Franchise. The series was supposed to end with Chapter 4, but after that film’s success, Paramount quickly greenlit another, bringing the character of Tommy Jarvis back to fight Jason. This film featured Tommy Jarvis in a mental institution after his battle with Jason and is much more concerned with sex and nudity than telling a coherent story.

The fifth film in the series attempted to go in a new direction with the ending implying that Tommy Jarvis was the one donning the mask. This is quickly retconned in the next film but it makes this movie feel bizarre and out of place. The mental institution subplot is not handled with care and the film is rampant with shock value nudity that doesn’t support the plot. Apparently, a lot of the sex was left on the cutting room floor but there is still enough here to make a gratuitous romp and the worst in the franchise.