Friday the 13th: From worst to best

It surely hasn't escaped anyone's attention by now that slasher films are my forte. A while ago, I ranked the Scream films according to my personal taste, and now, the second (of three!) Friday the 13ths of the year is here. Naturally thought I'd take this opportunity to rank all the Friday the 13th films. From worst to best!

12. Jason X (2002)

Jason Voorhees in space? On paper, it might sound... no, even on paper, this idea doesn't sound the least bit fun. Quite the opposite, in fact. How dare anyone even pitch an idea like this? It starts off somewhat promisingly with Jason, who looks pretty good, chained up in a large hangar. It's a little unclear how he ended up there if you've seen the previous films. Then things go haywire pretty quickly when Jason is frozen and wakes up on board a spaceship a few years later. We get to see everything from androids to Super-Jason. Behind the camera is the late James Isaac, who worked on special effects for Return of the Jedi (1983) and Gremlins (1984), while Noel J. Cunningham, son of Sean S. Cunningham, who was behind the first Friday the 13th, acted as producer. One might think that he inherited his parent's good taste, but here it's clear that good taste skips a generation.

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

My good friend and childhood buddy won't like reading this, but this is not a good film. It starts off brilliantly with a grotesque Jason (played by Kane Hodder for the third time, Jason X was the fourth and last), big and heavy with worn clothes and a hockey mask that has almost fused to his face. Then he gets shot to pieces by a bunch of FBI agents. But, surprise, surprise, Jason's evil soul is not welcome in hell and lives on in various human forms. At the end, when Jason had finally returned to his real body for about two minutes, a couple of demons come and drag Jason down to hell. It's a bit funny, or actually very funny, that Freddy Krueger's knife-equipped hand appears in the very last seconds of the film and pulls down Jason's mask. This is a perfect transition to...

10. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

...the next film on the list, which at first was a film I had been looking forward to for a very long time. I also thought it was good the first time I saw it. Then I realised that it wasn't actually good at all. Still, I think it ties things up a bit, with Freddy pulling Jason's mask down to hell almost exactly ten years later, even if it doesn't work particularly well when it comes down to it. Neither Jason nor Freddy should be in some kind of death match with each other; that's not where the appeal of these two characters lies. They're not Godzilla or Kong, so to speak. Sean S. Cunningham is actually the producer of that film...

9. Friday the 13th (2009)

...which he also produced the remake of. As a remake, it's not as good as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) or The Hills Have Eyes (2006), but overall it's still quite good. However, you have to compare it to the other films in the franchise and then it doesn't rank higher than ninth place. Jason captures women and keeps them imprisoned for several weeks? What on earth is that about? But then I like that he uses both a pillowcase as a mask, as in Part 2, and the legendary hockey mask. German director Marcus Nispel is behind the camera, and he also directed the aforementioned remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

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

The first time Jason comes back from the grave, literally. The character Tommy Jarvis, who kills (for the moment) Jason in the fourth part, has lived a life in fear, not knowing if Jason is really dead. To really, really, really find out if Jason is dead, Tommy digs up Jason's body and pierces it with an iron spike a bunch of times. Stupid as he is, Tommy leaves the iron spike in Jason's body during the thunderstorm that is raging at the moment, and as we all know, lightning can revive a body that has been dead for many years (NOTE: irony). In this way, Jason begins his slaughter once again. The film has a certain comical undertone that I haven't really taken to, but that seems to be something wrong with me, as many people rank it high, or highest, on their top lists for the film series. Still, it's fun that Alice Cooper's He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask) is used as the theme song.

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

Thanks to the comical undertone of the previous film, the eighth instalment in the series ends up in seventh place, and once again Jason returns from the dead through a powerful electric shock. The series' production company, Paramount, felt that competition had intensified, in both 1988 and 1989, when Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street all released sequels. The latter series was clearly more popular at the time because it was more imaginative, with Freddy Krueger chasing people in their dreams (and we all know how scary dreams can be...), while Jason was still running around among the trees at Crystal Lake, doing the same old things over and over again. What to do? Well, let him loose in New York, of course. However, 75% of the film takes place on a boat on its way to New York. It was not warmly received by cinema-goers, and the amount of money the film made was considered a disappointment for Paramount. Even though I'm not particularly interested in seeing Jason chop people down in New York, the film would definitely have benefited from more scenes in the big city.

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

As I wrote in the previous film, this was a tough year in terms of competition and when there is competition, you have to stand out. So in the eighth instalment, Jason was sent to New York, and in the seventh, a girl with telekinetic powers was thrown in. That instalment is strongly reminiscent, in many ways, of A Nightmare on Elm Street and could have been omitted entirely, in my opinion. Thankfully, her powers are not used too much. However, the powers contribute to the deplorable final scene when the girl character's father, who has been dead for many years, suddenly rises from Crystal Lake and pulls Jason down into the "depths". It's so stupid and bad that I'm about to fall off my chair as I write this. Apart from these powers, it's a good slasher film with an incredibly cool look for Jason (played by Kane Hodder), where you can see his spine because he was wearing very worn clothes and because he had been lying at the bottom of the lake since Part VI. Oh and some cool murders.

5. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

The fifth instalment in the series was, in my opinion, the worst in many years (it should be added that I saw these films for the first time a few years before I became a teenager). Why is that? Well, because Jason isn't in it. It's about an ambulance driver who dresses up as Jason to take revenge on the inmates of a youth detention centre where his son was killed by one of the inmates. As a slasher film, it's perfectly fine, and considering that it doesn't have the excesses of the previous film on my list (very comical undertones, telekinetic powers, and a trip to New York), it earns fifth place.

4. Friday the 13th (1980)

Here we have the original itself, the film that started the slasher craze in 1980. It suffers from the same problem as Part 5, namely that Jason is not the killer. As Ghostface points out in Scream (1996), when Drew Barrymore's character answers "Jason" to the question of who the killer is in Friday the 13th, Jason doesn't appear until the sequel, because in the original film, it's mother Pamela Voorhees who is the killer. A really good slasher film, but for me it loses some of its appeal because Jason is not the killer, which is synonymous with this series. It's fun to see Kevin Bacon in one of his very first film roles and behind the camera is the aforementioned Sean S. Cunningham, and Tom Savini, the master of make-up and special effects in horror films, also makes an appearance. The film cost just over very little to make and grossed a whopping tons in the box office.

3. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

The predecessor was a box office smash hit of rare proportions and this is where the golden age of slasher films began. Here, things start to get really serious as Jason makes his debut as a killer (with a pillowcase over his face). He is also very human compared to later films in the series (which is not surprising, of course). Many of the murders are really cool and the film has a wonderful slasher film atmosphere. Steve Miner has taken over the director's chair, and in addition to this and Part 3, he has also directed Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Simply put, he's a guy who knows his stuff (I will return to the aforementioned Halloween constellation at some point in the future).

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

Brutal and aggressive, there we have two adjectives that describe the fourth instalment of the film series (which, as the name suggests, was supposed to be the last). Jason enters with a raw power not seen in the first two instalments and kills everything he sees. A memorable murder is when he smashes the shower cubicle and crushes the skull of the character showering against the wall. Jason is completely unstoppable. Almost, anyway... In the end, it's a young Corey Feldman who has the last word when he chops Jason's skull into a thousand pieces. This is the stereotype of a damn good slasher film that I have few complaints about.

1. Friday the 13th Part III (1983)

In hindsight, it's the third instalment of the film series that is my absolute favourite. It's not as brutal and aggressive as the film above, but there are so many memorable and iconic moments in the film that justify my choice of ranking. Among other things, he gets his legendary hockey mask in this film, with a cool scene where we viewers get to see him for the first time (we'll forget that he shoots a victim with a harpoon, as firearms don't belong in slasher films), and at the end of the film, he gets his iconic axe mark on his mask. Incidentally, it's a final sequence in which he is first hanged and then, a minute later, gets an axe in the head. I have long since forgotten that the film is a "3D film".