Friday The 13th Movies In Order And How To Watch Them
Friday the 13th persists as a pillar of the horror movie genre in spite of itself. Unlike Wes Craven with Elm Street and John Carpenter with Halloween, there aren't any beloved filmmakers making their marks here. Even so, yearly releases during the 1980s established Jason Voorhees as one of cinema's scariest killers, but thanks to a whole pile of battles over who actually has the right to make more Friday the 13th flicks, we haven't had a new movie in the series since the very (commercially) successful 2009 reboot. That's a bummer, but the franchise is still one of our favorites to revisit every spooky season because there's just something about that guy and his hockey mask--and, fortunately, there's a prequel TV series in the works that will hopefully exist someday.
There are 12 movies overall in the Friday the 13th franchise. The first eight of them came out nearly yearly from 1980-89, followed by more sporadic releases: Jason Goes to Hell in 1993, Jason X in 2001, and Freddy vs. Jason in 2003. Then came a proper gritty reboot in 2009 from the director of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake--a louder and more painful version of Friday the 13th that attempted to take this story more seriously than it ever had been before. And now we're still waiting on a sequel that we know will never come, though we've still got our fingers crossed for Jason's eventual return.
But that's OK, because we've got enough existing Friday the 13th movies to keep us pretty busy.
Friday the 13th movies in release order
Friday the 13th is pretty straightforward as a viewing experience--prior to the start of the series, child Jason drowned at Camp Crystal Lake because the counselors were distracted, and now he stalks the woods as an invincible beast, looking for revenge. While most of the films do take place one after the other, they mostly stand alone and don't require you to remember events that came before whichever one you're watching.
So it's not the sort of series that really demands to be watched in order for story reasons. But if you want to experience the evolution of Jason as a slasher villain--the kills get a lot more creative the longer the series goes--release order is the way to go.
- Friday the 13th (1980)
- Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
- Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
- Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
- Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
- Friday the 13th: The Television Series (1987)
- Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
- Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
- Jason X (2001)
- Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
- Friday the 13th reboot (2009)
Friday the 13th timeline
This is the order in which the main series movies take place. It's not too different from the release order, but a couple items have been swapped around. The 2009 reboot and 1987 television series aren't included here because they exist in their own separate worlds.
- Friday the 13th (1980)
- Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
- Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
- Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
- Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
- Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
- Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
- Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
- Jason X (2001)
1. Friday the 13th (1980)
This one is the template. The teen counselors at Camp Crystal Lake have arrived ahead of the young campers in order to get ready for the summer and fool around with each other--but a mystery person is going around stabbing them to death, with a particular eye toward the ones who are doing sex stuff. But don't worry; this is no morality play.
2. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Five years after the events of the first movie, another group of teens has gathered at the other side of Crystal Lake for counselor training. The instructor, Paul, tells the story of the first movie, and wraps it up by claiming that a resurrected Jason now roams the woods seeking to murder anyone he comes across as revenge for his mother's death. And, uh, he turns out to be right.
3. Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
A young woman who grew up on Crystal Lake visits her childhood home with her friends--unfortunately, Jason has been sleeping in the barn since the last movie, and it's not long before he meets the gang. This one is notable for being released in 3D--expect lots of stuff flying at the screen--and also for being the one where Jason gets his hockey mask for the first time.
4. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
The title for this one is a lie, of course, since there are way more Friday the 13th movies after this one than there were before it. Despite that, this fourth movie may be the best in the series, following new franchise protagonist Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), who's just a kid, as he teams with the brother of one of Jason's victims from Part 2 to try to take down the monster for real this time.
5. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
This fifth movie treated Jason's death as final and follows Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd this time) as he deals with the trauma of his fight with Jason--taking us away from Crystal Lake and essentially attempting to reboot the series with a new main baddie who cosplays as Jason. While A New Beginning is actually pretty fun and has an exceptionally high body count, the lack of the real Jason makes it a little weird.
6. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Tommy Jarvis is back once more (played by Thom Matthews this time), and he's still traumatized by all that stuff that happened at Crystal Lake--he goes to Jason's grave and digs him up in order to prove to himself that Jason truly is dead by burning the corpse. Unfortunately, the body is struck by lightning instead, and Jason is resurrected. Whoops.
7. Friday the 13th: The Series (1987)
This TV show, about a young woman who inherits an antique shop that's full of cursed objects, really doesn't have anything to do with the movies beyond Easter eggs--there are zero appearances by Jason Voorhees--but this three-season series has plenty of its own charm as a fun little supernatural adventure show. Plus, there's an episode from director David Cronenberg.
8. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
The powers that be made their first attempt at a crossover with Freddy Krueger while developing this film. When that didn't work out, they shifted to a different sort of crossover: Jason vs. a telekinetic teen girl who's more or less based on the horror classic Carrie. The New Blood isn't a particularly well liked Friday the 13th entry, thanks to its relatively tame thrills compared with the rest of the series, but the attempt to shake things up was appreciated.
9. Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Perhaps the most frustrating Friday the 13th movie of them all, Jason Takes Manhattan mostly takes place on a boat--they only get to New York at the end, so this is not exactly the NYC-based slasher flick promised by the title.
10. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
The franchise was in decline at this point. After Jason Takes Manhattan, Paramount sold the rights to the Jason Voorhees character to New Line while keeping the franchise rights, which is why this doesn't have "Friday the 13th" in the title. And that may be for the best anyway, since this one is pretty different. Jason Goes to Hell opens with Jason being caught in an FBI trap that blows him up, leaving only tattered and destroyed remains--but after the coroner eats Jason's heart, the spirit of the franchise big bad takes over his body. And we also get a deep lore dive to explain why Jason even exists (his mom made a deal with the devil, basically). It's not a good movie, but it is different. And when you're nine movies deep in a series, that matters.
11. Jason X
Jason has been captured by the government again, but they can't figure out how to kill him--so they cryogenically freeze him. 400 years later, humans live in outer space, and Jason's body is revived on a space station where he becomes a cyborg and goes on a pretty sick rampage. While Jason X has been mocked endlessly for the past two decades for its conceptual silliness, it's actually one of the best and most fun movies in this series.
12. Freddy vs. Jason
Freddy returns to Elm Street to attempt another killing spree, but discovers that everybody's forgotten about him. To have power he needs to be feared, so he tricks Jason into slaughtering a few teens so folks will remember all the chaos he wrought back in the day. It works for a minute, but it turns out, as we know all too well, that Jason doesn't stop killing once he gets started--and so Freddy will have to fight Jason in order to keep the zombie boy from usurping Freddy's place as the main villain of Elm Street. It's not tasteful, but it is delightful. Mostly.
13. Friday the 13th (2009)
This reimagining of the series, which was supposed to serve as a fresh start, takes a couple ideas from the original movies--the biggest being the protagonist looking for his sister who was a previous Jason victim--and otherwise takes things in some surprising new directions. But the best part of this one is the new Jason--he's basically a slasher commando here, which makes him a much scarier and much more fun threat than he was before.
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