Friday the 13th

*May contain spoilers*

The 'Friday the 13th' franchise is one of the most popular horror film series ever! The hockey mask has become an iconic symbol of the spooky villain, Jason Vorhees. Everyone has seen the image, and even if people aren't aware of its significance, they generally know the hockey mask. The first Friday was released in the era when horror films really started taking off as a genre of films. Don't get me wrong, some of the old horror films are fantastic, but in the 1970s and 1980s they became more widely popular. This 'slasher' film provides the typical combination of suspense, gore and sequels which only get worse.

The first instalment in the Friday the 13th series is, in my opinion, very good. When I first watched the film, I came into it with the idea that every film was haunted by this 'Jason' guy who has some reason to kill everyone who every has the misfortune to go to this one campsite. I was pleasantly surprised. The first film is, as many horror films are, stalked by an unknown killer who is killing the teenagers preparing Camp Crystal Lake for opening. When this is revealed to be some woman whose motivation is to avenge her son who drowned because the old camp workers were not paying attention to him it's quite a surprise. However, its a pleasant surprise. Dramatically more pleasant than the ending of the film, which you'll know what I mean if you've seen it, and if you haven't I'm not going to ruin it, and instead encourage you to watch it!

The second film sees the first appearance of the iconic villain. He stays around the camp featured in the first film, intending to stop anyone ever going there again. Naturally, people do turn up with the intention of reopening the campsite to the public once again. As you can imaging, murder, gore and suspense follow. When Jason's shrine to his mother is revealed, complete with the head that is removed in the previous film, I was revolted. This was a good revulsion though, because it was genuine, and very few horror films make me genuinely revolted. However, I didn't think that the second film was as good as the first. It was good, don't get me wrong, but the first one was better, and here begins the slippery slope that every horror film finds itself on.

The third installment was laughable. It was filmed in 3-D, and in today's age of 3-D films I much prefer to see a film in 2-D instead. 1982 3-D is ridiculous, though I'm sure was quite spectacular when it was first released. There is one scene where one of the unsuspecting teenagers is killed by Jason, who squeezes his eyeball out of his head before 'finishing him off'. When his eyeball pops out it is complete with an extension from the back of it which projects it forwards. However, despite this large obstacle, I did quite enjoy the third film.

The fourth film is entitled 'The Final Chapter' and for those of you bored of reading this, I'm sorry, but it's not the end of the franchise yet. Despite being 'killed' in the previous installments, Jason returns in this one and decides that the kids renting a house on Crystal Lake will be his next victims. He then moves on to the kids next door, one of whom kills him. At this point, given the title of the film and the seeming finality with which Jason was killed I found myself reflecting on a very good quadrilogy of films which, while not being amazing, have to be viewed in the time they were made, and are iconic. However, I already had ordered the next installment and found myself wondering how Jason could feasibly come back in the next one.

The fifth 'Friday' is the weirdest for me. I don't think I can talk about how bad the fifth film was without giving the twist away. However, I don't feel too bad about it, partly because I did warn you that there'd be spoilers, and partly because it's not that shocking anyway. By the time you get to the fifth film in a horror series I don't expect many people are watching for the intricate plot twists. The character of Jason doesn't actually appear in this film. The film follows the young boy who killed Jason in the previous film, Tommy, who is know grown up and living in a halfway house following his confinement to a mental institution. Tommy is continually stalked by dreams of the masked killer, and so when people around the halfway house start being gruesomely killed he gets a bit freaked out. The hockey mask appears in this film, but the man behind it is just a worker at the house who's son was murdered by one of the patients. As a result of this he decides to take on the persona of a serial killer one of his patients is haunted by, and kill everyone at the house, despite none of them actually murdering his son personally. This takes 'going too far' to a whole new level.

By the time the sixth film rolls around I was getting a bit sick of the franchise. Certainly there were many murders, and lots of blood, but there were just too many of them and as far as I could tell they were all pretty much the same. Tommy features in this film again, and starts off by visiting the grave of Jason, naturally resurrecting him in the process. This is the stupidest move ever. If you were haunted by someone who tried to kill you for a large period of your life, the last thing I'd do would be to go back to, and open up his grave. Jason goes back to Camp Crystal Lake, kills everyone there, and then Tommy appears to kill him. Blah blah blah, you get the idea.

This is exactly the same as what happens in the seventh film. Jason is resurrected, kills everyone at the camp and is returned to the bottom of the lake again. By this point I was completely bored of the films. Some people really like the sixth and seventh films, but I'm very ambivalent. I thought that the eighth film, 'Jason Takes Manhattan' might be better. I was wrong. While it was quite cool to see one of the most iconic villains in cinematic history wandering through New York, and actually hearing Jason speak for the first time, there were some utterly ridiculous elements in it. Apparently now Jason can teleport. This is quite impressive for a guy who has been killed and resurrected in nearly every film so far, and this film was definitely made to try and bleed as much money out of an immensely successful franchise.

The ninth film is the last Friday film in a way. It was intended to be the last one, and was meant to set up a fantastic climactic battle between the two greatest horror villains of cinematic history, Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger. We don't ever get told how Jason is resurrected in this film, and while being hunted by the FBI manages to pass his cliched black heart through one officer to the next. Jason manages to get his own body back but is then killed and a gloved hand with knives on the fingers drags him down to hell.

Jason X sees Jason resurrected again, and apparently the best way to stop him is to freeze him. Unsurprisingly Jason doesn't remain frozen for the length of the film and kills people 400 years later. In space. This was ridiculous.

A remake was released in 2009 with Jason witnessing his mother's death and then deciding to kill everyone at Crystal Lake again. I had high hopes for this film as it had the potential to be a refreshing take on the classic film. I wasn't expecting it to be better than the original, but I was expecting to enjoy it. It wasn't as bad as I was afraid, but it didn't grip me in the same way that the original, or the second one did.

As a franchise, there is no denying the success of the 'Friday' films, and the icon of Jason will live on as long as horror is popular. For many Halloweens to come there will be someone in a hockey mask and a machete. However, film by film the series goes downhill in my eyes. It starts out as very good, and then falls off to the point that sequels are being made for the sake of it. Definitely watch the first film. If you like that one a lot then watch the second. You should then watch the third and fourth, but unless you're a hardcore horror fan then do not go beyond that.