Happy Birthday Jason: Exploring what Friday the 13th killer was, is, and could’ve been
June 13. It’s his special day. Jason Voorhees’ birthday. But where is the birthday boy? It’s been a while since Jason last surfaced. Well, the real him, anyways… but we’ll get to that. First, let’s take a look back at the film franchise that spawned one of horror's most iconic slasher villains.
The reputation of the Friday the 13th series is kind of strange. It’s one of horror’s most iconic slasher franchises, yet when you get down to it, most of the movies themselves aren’t really all that great.
Now, before you start brandishing your pitchforks and machetes, I should clarify that I love this series. Almost every entry is a joy to watch for me, even the ones that a lot of people don’t care for (case in point: my personal favorite is 1985’s Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, and I could honestly write an entire article on why I think it’s underrated). Jason Voorhees is even a strong contender for my favorite slasher villain of all time.
Having said all of that, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we haven’t seen the best that the series has to offer. Out of the 12 Friday the 13th movies released so far, Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) is the only one that I can confidently call a truly great film. The 2009 reboot comes close, but it stops short due to some poor writing and over the top nudity. Most—if not all—of the rest focus on cool kills and teenage sex rather than having an actual plot with well-written characters. They’re pretty same-y too, often repeating the same basic plot structure with recycled character archetypes placed in near-identical settings.
I’m sorry if I sound like a prude talking about these movies, as that’s not my intent. Again, I adore this franchise; I just think that Friday the 13th could be so much more than what it’s been up to this point.
The atmosphere of the original Friday the 13th (1980) is unlike anything I’ve seen in any other movie. There’s a quiet stillness to it, like that of a bad dream. It’s as though something dreadful is looming overhead, but you can’t quite make out what it is. The way that characters talk about the lake being cursed, a conversation about how full moons like this one bring out the worst in people, and one character’s recount of a nightmare they had which foreshadows their death; it all creates the feeling that each of the town’s tragedies were predestined to happen by an otherworldly force, quietly orchestrating the film’s otherwise realistic events from behind the scenes. It’s a shame that none of the other entries maintain this same atmosphere of the Crystal Lake curse. Sure, they mention it, but it feels more like set-dressing than something tangible underlying the films.
However, I think that most of Friday the 13th’s hidden potential lies with the villains at its heart. Both Pamela and Jason Voorhees are such tragic characters. The former is a single mother turned killer following the death of her only son. Jason was her whole world, and he died because of negligent camp counselors who barely got a slap on the wrist before the camp shrugged the whole thing off. That’d be enough to drive anyone mad.
And then there’s Jason, a disabled young boy drowned by the cruelty of his peers. Worse, he gets reincarnated after Pamela’s death as an undying killing machine. He didn’t ask for any of this; he didn’t ask to be killed, only to be resurrected and forced to live forever in a world that took his mother from him. All he wanted was his mom, and all he wishes for now is to be left alone with her remains by the lake where they both perished. Yet the world can’t even give him that. So, he exacts his vengeance onto anyone who dares to trespass into his home, unleashing a fury that will never be sated.
Unfortunately, most of the movies don’t do these characters justice. The first film fleshes out Pamela to an extent—with actress Betsy Palmer doing a lot of the heavy lifting—but she’s only introduced in the climax of the film and dies shortly thereafter. Jason, meanwhile, hardly gets any development despite possessing significantly more screentime. He’s almost always treated as merely a masked killer.
Of course, there are a handful of exceptions, but even they feel like afterthoughts. Part II (1981) uses Jason’s backstory as a way to give final girl Ginny the upperhand, wearing Pamela’s sweater and pretending to be her to trick Jason during the climax. Freddy vs. Jason (2003) uses it as a way for Freddy to manipulate Jason, and then to torment him. It also uses Jason’s backstory to garner sympathy towards him as the lesser of the two evils.
Friday the 13th (2009) is probably the best attempt at treating Jason like an actual character. It’s got flashbacks to when he witnessed Pamela’s death, an altar for her that’s reminiscent of the one seen in Part II, and a locket of her that Jason keeps close at all times. Although these details for Jason’s character may simply exist so that the 2009 reboot has an excuse for Jason to kidnap Whitney instead of killing her, and it may get overshadowed by the film's sleaziness and less than quality writing mentioned earlier, I’ll take it.
I’m going to go on a quick tangent about the man who plays this version of Jason, Derek Mears. During interviews, Mears has talked about how Jason meant a lot to him growing up. Developing a severe case of the auto-immune disease alopecia at a young age, Mears lost almost all of his body hair. Jason, an outcast who similarly lacks body hair, made him feel seen. As someone who’s grown up with mental disorders and was outcast like Jason, it’s a sentiment that I relate to.
Mears has also described the care that he puts into his performances when playing silent and/or masked characters like Jason. He puts an emphasis on being thoughtful about the character’s body language and the emotions behind each movement. It comes through in his performance, with it being the scariest and most engaging Jason performance I’ve seen. It’s for these reasons that he’s my favorite Jason actor in the series.
Anyways, let’s get back on track. Pamela and Jason Voorhees only had each other, and the loss of one drove the other to kill. Think of the great, tragic stories you could tell with that! Not to mention what would happen if you paired them with a cast of well-written and interesting characters too. I’m not saying that we can’t have any blood and boobs in the next Friday the 13th or that it has to be a slow-burn character study (not that I’d mind the latter), but it has the potential to be something special.
There was hope when the upcoming Crystal Lake TV series from A24 was announced, with the premise centering around Pamela. However, under the franchise’s current stewardship, I find myself to be rather unoptimistic. “Jason Un1v3rse,” the new label that the franchise now operates under, has reduced Jason Voorhees from a tragic villain to a marketable brand. They’ve placed a bigger emphasis on pumping out products of their AI Jason design, featuring that godawful mask they seem so insistent on using (to the point it replaced all of the classic masks in the Friday the 13th maze at Halloween Horror Nights last year, retaining only the respective damage of each mask), over making anything of actual quality. The short-film they released last August, Sweet Revenge, is a glorified beer ad that got taken down when the promotional deal came to an end. As for the new Dead by Daylight collab, Jason has lost the Voorhees name and isn’t even from Crystal Lake.
In spite of this, though, not all hope is lost. While the chances of us getting an official Friday the 13th film that lives up to the series’ legacy and potential are slim, others have already done it. Two primary examples come to mind, the first of which being the Never Hike Alone fan-films from Womp Stomp Films.
I know that the term “fan-film” has a negative connotation to it, but trust me, Never Hike Alone is worth your time. When I binged the whole Friday the 13th series with some friends and tacked these on at the end, they were all taken aback by their quality. Some of my friends even said that they liked them more than the official movies.
Set in a modern-day Camp Crystal Lake, the first Never Hike Alone (2017) is about a hiking YouTuber named Kyle McLeod who accidentally discovers the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake whilst out on a solo backpacking trip. Once there, he stumbles upon Jason Voorhees, and he’ll have to use everything he has at his disposal if he hopes to make it out of there alive. In the interest of not spoiling any of the surprises that these fan-films have in store, I won’t say much more about their story than that. Their cinematography is awesome, they have my favorite Jason design period, and I think they did a really good job with their characters. That includes Jason, who’s given the depth he deserves while still being made as imposing as ever. Never Hike Alone improves on the original films in almost every way, yet it does so with a clear adoration for them, never losing the essence of Friday the 13th. Because of that, it’s earned a spot alongside the official films for me.
You can watch the Never Hike Alone series on Womp Stomp Films’ youtube channel, with their official playlist being the best place to do so. Ignore how many videos there are; the first four are the films themselves, the rest are just bonus material. Even if you only check out the first one, I still can’t recommend it enough if you’re a fan of Friday the 13th. They’re also releasing an animated short-film this November on Friday the 13th, titled Never Hike Alone: Ghosts in the Fog.
My other recommendation is In A Violent Nature (2024). Remember when I said that I wouldn’t mind a slow-burn character study from Friday the 13th? Yeah, that’s sort of what this is. I think my favorite description for the film is one that I saw online around when it came out. I regrettably can’t remember who it was, but they called the film an ASMR video of someone walking through the woods except every 15 minutes someone gets gutted.
In A Violent Nature is a slasher movie about—stop me if you’ve heard this before—a silent, undead killer who’s brought back from the grave when his resting place is disturbed and his mother’s locket is taken by a group of young adults. Johnny, a disabled boy killed in a prank gone wrong, has since been resurrected into a hulking slasher. Now he stalks the woods, looking for that which was stolen from him; the only thing he has left to remember his long-dead parents.
What sets In A Violent Nature apart from other slashers is that it’s told almost entirely from Johnny’s perspective. As Johnny lumbers through the forest from kill to kill, we the audience are with him every meandering step of the way. To top it all off, there’s no non-diagetic sounds or music that play during the journey. The film is accompanied only by the sounds that Johnny hears.
In A Violent Nature is very slow as a result. However, it’s also beautiful in a way. The film emphasizes the nature around Johnny using its gorgeous cinematography and sound-design. It also humanizes him in a way that no Friday the 13th ever came close to doing with Jason. He, too, was just a young boy killed by the callousness of those around him; he, too, was cursed with immortality and was never to see his parents again; and he, too, wants to be left alone with his memento of mother, slaughtering anyone he crosses paths with in a blind rage.
And boy does he! The kills of In A Violent Nature are brutal, more so than anything dished out by the Voorhees family in Friday the 13th. Real gruesome stuff, with some really good suspense in there too.
It’s by no means a perfect film, but In A Violent Nature is my personal favorite movie from 2024. You can stream it on Shudder, or rent it on Amazon Prime. There’s also a sequel set in a summer camp coming soon, with the first film’s writer/director Chris Nash returning to write the script while Nate Wilson takes over as director. I just hope that Nash doesn’t double-down on what he said about not meaning to humanize Johnny in the first movie, calling him more of a wild animal that acts purely on instinct. Time will tell.
As for Friday the 13th, or the “Jason Un1v3rse” brand, we’ve got Crystal Lake premiering on Oct. 15 exclusively on Peacock. A new film is reportedly in the works as well, though details are scarce since it’s early in development so details are scarce. Maybe one of these projects will surprise me and give us something amazing. But as much as I’d love for that to happen, I’m not holding my breath so long as they keep pushing this version of Jason. In the meantime, we have works like Never Hike Alone and In A Violent Nature to fill the void, and the original 12 films aren’t going anywhere. Happy birthday Jason.
