Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) and the Growth of Slasher Franchises

In the year 1980, Sean S. Cunningham directed a film titled Friday the 13^th.  The basic premise was that a killer was on the loose at a summer camp, and was murdering all of the counselors who had arrived early to set up.  It sparked one of the most influential franchises in horror history, even though it was not nearly the first film within genre.  It would create a franchise of twelve films, spawn a related-in-name-only television show, and help to ignite the slasher film flame that had been sparked by films like Halloween and Black Christmas.  Friday the 13^th became a mainstay in the horror genre and is highly regarded today for how it helped change the horror landscape.

If you look at the slasher subgenre of horror films, it is easy to see that three franchises stand out above the others.  These three are Friday the 13^th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.  As each series added more movies, they also evolved into their own thing.  Using the same exact formula can only be entertaining for so long.  Change breathes a new life into something that has become stale.  This is why A Nightmare on Elm Street added more humour as the years rolled by.  This is also why the Halloween franchise began establishing a deeper mythology surrounding Michael Myers.  For Friday the 13^th, a little bit of both were attempted throughout the years, and the movies are still widely known because of it.

The movie that began the transition for Friday the 13^th was the fifth movie in the franchise, Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning.  The title is both accurate and inaccurate at the same time.  The overall story of the franchise is continuing.  The movie follows Tommy Jarvis a few years after the events of the previous film, and how he must deal with the traumatizing events that occurred.  At the same time, the movie moves beyond Jason Voorhees and establishes a new killer in the franchise.  This marks the beginning of a new villain, but not the beginning of a new mythology.

As I’ve said before, there was an additional depth to the mythology being brought through Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning.  There were consequences and repercussions from previous movies that were culminating in the events shown throughout this installment.  The Voorhees family was no longer causing physical harm, but they are still destroying the emotional state of someone who had survived their terror.  The filmmakers were showing that emotional scars can go much deeper than the physical equivalent.  While transitioning the series in the new direction, they were showing how emotional scars can change a person.  It was an interesting and well-executed concept that was completely ignored in future installments of the franchise.

The problem with Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning is that viewers did not want to see how Jason had affected the mental state of Tommy Jarvis.  Audiences wanted to see Jason Voorhees killing people.  They felt cheated that Jason was not in the fifth installment, which is strange because he wasn’t the one doing the killing in the first installment either.  It really is a shame.  Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning added depth to a series that has always been primarily about one-upping their own kill scenes, and the final twist was a game changer for the series.  The fact that audiences had a distaste for this movie, all because there was no Jason Voorhees in it, helped to send the franchise in yet another direction.

I’m not going to go into too much depth about the movies following Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning.  That’s a whole other post for another time.  I’ll likely be watching another Friday the 13^th film at another point in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I will say this, though.  Following the fifth movie, the franchise became exceedingly more ridiculous, with a humorous bent on the kills.  Jason Voorhees basically became a zombie.  He killed people by throwing sleeping bags against trees, punching their heads off, and things like that.  He went to New York City, and he went to space.  Jason Voorhees even switched bodies for a while, killing through other people.  Then he fought Freddy Krueger.  The series lost any sense of grounded reality that it once had because people loved Jason Voorhees more than quality storytelling.

Slasher franchises grow and change as they become bigger.  Friday the 13^th is a good example of how that can happen.  Every movie, beginning with Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning, changed something about the series and helped it become the grotesque beast that it was near the end.  Eventually a remake would be made that grounded the franchise in some sort of reality.  However, the franchise is widely remembered for those later movies that breathed insanity.  They may have been fun, but they were so far outside believability that it was hard to take them seriously.  Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning stayed within a realistic world, and tried to further the series in a way that you don’t usually see horror franchises grow.  It will always be interesting to think about what could have happened, if only they had continued the story.

There are a couple of notes that I would like to make before you finish reading:

• If you have any suggestions for the Sunday “Bad” Movie, leave a comment below.  I do look at the comments.  You could also tell me on Twitter.  That would work too.
• Other movies in the Sunday “Bad” Movies that would fit the slasher genre are Backwoods Bloodbath and April Fools.
• This movie was suggested by @ThatStevenC.  He might not remember suggesting it, but he did.