Being cooped up in quarantine during a viral pandemic will make you consider some crazy ways to entertain yourself. For example, seeing that this year is the 40th (!) anniversary of the original Friday the 13th film, and knowing that I have for the most part had the entire franchise in my blind spot (except Jason X for some awful reason), I have taken it upon myself to make the trip through all 12 films, including the 2009 remake and Freddy vs Jason, and share my thoughts as a newcomer to the Cult of Jason. I am excited, but I am also apprehensive.
Having 40 years of slasher movie and pop culture history between Friday the 13th and today is something that undeniably shapes a first impression. The original film, which is just about as bare-bones a plot as you can get, concerns a group of to-be camp counselors working at Camp Crystal Lake, a summer camp re-opening after the drowning of a child and subsequently the murder of two counselors 21 years prior. In the days that lead up to the camp opening, the group of six teens are stalked and brutally murdered one-by-one by an unseen killer.
I suppose the one idea that the film introduces that is still interesting 40 years later is the choice to never fully show the killer on screen until the final confrontation. Most of the kill scenes are shown at least partially from the killer’s point of view, only giving us shots of hands and the victims’ reactions as clues to their identity. Unfortunately for me, the identity of the killer was not a mystery (thanks a lot, Scream) but it didn’t keep me from appreciating the unique approach in masking the killer’s relationship to the camp, their motivations, and even their gender until the very end.
I was about to complain that the kills are not very impressive, even for 1980, but I think the issue is more with how they’re presented. There’s a couple of throat slits (one off-screen), an arrow through the neck, and an ax to the face, among others. But the thing that really makes them pale in comparison to other slashers of the same era is that they’re never really lingered on too long before they’re seemingly completely forgotten about. The characters just exist to be picked off, like checking a box on a to-do list, no real weight behind any of the death.
I don’t think I can argue Friday the 13th‘s lasting impact on the horror genre as a whole, but taken out of the last four decades of context, it’s just a middling and mostly unimpressive excuse to splash a little blood around. I’m excited to see where the franchise goes from here given that most of the things you associate with the series are absent from the first film. I’m ready for things to get ridiculous.