While it may sound unlikely, a Friday the 13th reboot that drops the franchise's famous villain Jason Voorhees might be the best move the iconic slasher series could make for numerous reasons. The Friday the 13th movies have not had an easy time in recent years. For over a decade, a protracted battle over the rights to the slasher franchise has kept Jason off cinema screens.
This has prompted a debate on whether another Friday the 13th reboot is even a good idea. After such a long absence from the screen, the timeless appeal of Jason Voorhees can’t help but feel a little outdated to some viewers. Meanwhile, the fact that the Friday the 13th series can’t simply copy Halloween 2018’s reboot formula means that a new movie in the series could be tricky to pull off.
While it may sound strange to fans of the franchise, there’s reason to believe that a new Friday the 13th movie that drops Jason Voorhees himself might be the best thing for the franchise's revival plans. As one of the only classic horror franchises without a 2020s reboot, the influential Friday the 13th movies are long overdue for another reinvention. However, fans can’t picture another remake, reboot, or sequel succeeding because few viewers of the Friday the 13th series have gone back to the original 1980 movie for inspiration. What the series needs isn’t another Jason adventure, but another whodunit in the vein of the 1980's original sleeper hit, Friday the 13th.
Why A Jason-Centric Friday the 13th Reboot Won’t Work
The reason that a Friday the 13th reboot movie centering on Jason killing off a slew of new teen characters won’t work is simple. It was already done in director Marcus Nispel’s (actually pretty good) Friday the 13th remake back in 2009. The critically derided Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 is a lesson in what happens when a slasher franchise tries to tack an unnecessary sequel onto a series with a surprisingly solid '00s reboot (Nispel even directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003, too). As a result of this, few Friday the 13th fans are likely to look at the critical lambasting received by Leatherface’s return and decide that the same fate should befall Jason.
The Slasher Revival Deserves A New Friday the 13th Movie
Although Friday the 13th definitively doesn’t need its own Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022, the formative slasher series does deserve its share of the success that the sub-genre is currently enjoying. The critical and commercial success of Scream 2022 and Halloween 2018 and newcomers like Fear Street proves there is an appetite for slasher movies. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is a little more complicated since Robert Englund is so tied up in its appeal, but Friday the 13th has no such problems and could theoretically come back like any other classic slasher series—if the creators take the right route.
Slasher Movies Are Getting Weird (Again)
Fear Street was a three-movie event that bounced between '90s meta slashers, retro '70s slashers, and period piece folk horror. Director Ti West’s X is a slasher movie set entirely on the set of another fictional movie. Scream 2022 is more self-referential and meta than the rest of the franchise, while both Halloween 2018 and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 rely on viewers recognizing the Final Girls of their franchise predecessors to varying degrees of success. As was the case in the '90s, the slasher sub-genre is treading into weird, trippy, meta territory once again. 2003's Freddy Vs Jason proved that the Friday the 13th franchise could keep up with this trend, but the series hasn’t always been successful in its attempts to reinvent itself.
Friday the 13th Is Better Off Dropping Jason Than “Reinventing” Him
While Freddy Vs Jason was comparatively well-received, the campy, deeply silly, and desperately un-scary Jason X from 2001 proved that Jason’s simple “hack and slash” roots left the villain ill-suited to post-ironic, self-aware reinvention. This means that the trend toward weirder slasher movies can tend to leave lumbering masked murderers like Jason Voorhees, who have been parodied to hell and back, looking a little simplistic and outdated. As a result, a Friday the 13th movie revival that drops Jason will immediately wrong foot viewers and leave critics unable to call the franchise outing a cash-in coasting on its recognizable villain, allowing the sequel a real chance to wow both fans and newcomers.
The Original Friday the 13th Was A Jason-Less Whodunit
Fear Street, Malignant, and Scream 2022 all proved that viewers want something familiar but new in their slashers, and taking Friday the 13th back to its "whodunit" roots could provide this. Without relying on Jason, the Friday the 13th series could revisit the simple Giallo-influenced pleasures of the original movie. Given the popularity of the later Jason-centric sequels, it is often forgotten that the killer of the 1980 original Friday the 13th is kept a mystery until the movie’s ending. A new Friday the 13th sequel would need a new killer to replace Mrs. Voorhees, but there are plenty of meta twists available to the series. The killer could be Jason’s vengeful father or one of the teens possessed by Jason, or the townspeople of Camp Crystal Lake who have struck an unholy bargain with Jason, providing sacrifices to keep the seemingly un-killable and canonically demonic villain sated.
Jason Voorhees Can Still Set Up A Friday the 13th Sequel
A Jason-free Friday the 13th that operates as more of a slasher whodunit would prove that the series can adapt to modern audience expectations and offer something more meta and subversive for 2022. Then, an ending that brought back Jason to set up a sequel would not only reference the original Friday the 13th but also be the best of both worlds as it would prove the franchise can bring him back without overly relying on him. The original Friday the 13th’s unmasked Jason attack ending is one of cinema’s most infamously effective jump scares precisely because viewers had no idea Jason was even alive, let alone that he would suddenly appear and attack the movie’s Final Girl. In the same vein, pulling off an entire successful addition to the Friday the 13th franchise without relying on the famous villain of the series could lull viewers into a false sense of security, making the last-minute appearance of Jason Voorhees all the more terrifying and effective.