You know, being in a level 5 lock-down has had it’s fair share of perks. My cooking skills have come along quite a bit, I can whack off 4 times a day now, and I made my own wine. Remember when McGee made the wine?
That was pretty cool, right?
Anywhoo it also gave me more time to finally sit down and indulge in a movie franchise that I never quite got around to watching in full. The Friday The 13th movies blitzed the 1980’s with 8 movies, 1 in the 90’s, and 3 in the 00’s (assuming you include “Freddy Vs. Jason” in the count, which is a bit of a hot topic for some folk).
That makes 12 movies. In a franchise called “Friday The 13th”.
I’m not usually that OCD about stuff, but that shit is annoying.
One of the main signifiers of a good franchise for me is the ability to maintain a level of consistency throughout the installments, while being able to put a unique spin on each effort and provide an intriguing set-up for the next movie (e.g the “Back To The Future” trilogy).
While Friday definitely has it’s share of memorable moments scattered throughout the entries, I find it hard to believe that sequels kept getting green-lit in a series of movies that never bothered to plan ahead and used the same generic cookie-cutter characters in ever fvcking movie to the point of tumor-inducing ad-nauseum-esque psychosis.
Boggles. The. Mind.
It was a full-on slog getting through all 12 movies. Even the ones that I liked. So much of the movies run-times are spent with stupid kids going back to the same fvcking camp over and over, as if all the murders and mayhem that happened beforehand was fake news or never happened.
It’s retarded as fvck, and that’s an insult to retarded people.
This is not my biggest issue with the franchise however. I can forgive inconsistencies, bland side characters and even the ropey-as-fvck ways they kept bringing Jason Voorhees back from the dead after certain death.
The biggest problem is Jason himself.
Jason never says a word throughout the franchise. He walks after his victims, like a robot dying to take a shit. He was a disabled kid who drowned in 1957, but manages to inexplicably come back to life when his psychotic mother is decapitated. Because reasons.
For the next 11 movies, he doesn’t grow or evolve or learn anything. He just keeps killing young people over and over again. As iconic a horror figure as Jason Voorhees has become, after 12 movies he just comes off as an unimaginative, low-energy rip-off of Frankenstein and Michael Myers.
By the time I got to Part IX (where he gets blown apart by gunfire and becomes a body-jumping demon) I could actually feel my brain-matter leaking out of my fvcking ears.
I suppose it’s no surprise to see that most big tent-pole franchises these days are way more planned out, with arcs and phases and with a deeper focus of structure storytelling. I just wish Star Wars had gotten that memo.
Either way, I’m never watching another “Friday The 13th” movie again.
I’d rather take a cheese grater to my eyeballs.
Alright, rant over. Here’s some sauce.
