Ever since Halloween had its huge box office success in 1978, Victor Miller, the creator of the Friday the 13th franchise, wanted to make his mark in the 80s slasher genre of horror movies. As a result, he created Jason Voorhees. Similar to Michael, this silent killer hides behind an iconic mask while he stalks and brutally murders teenagers. Based on how casually both killers walk after their fleeing victims, their calmness can almost be compared to the likes of Hannibal Lecter or any other “apex predator” type of killer, with Jason’s pulse never going above 85.
Miller’s instinct to piggyback off the success of Halloween paid off, and horror fans were glad to have it. The Friday the 13th movies ultimately became the highest-worldwide-grossing (pun intended) franchise making almost $470 million at the box office collectively, surpassing the Halloween franchise… until the 2018 Halloween movie came out and reclaimed the throne. Regardless, the franchise has definitely made its impact on pop culture, and it resurfaces every time a month begins on a Sunday… resulting in yet another “Friday the 13th.” Similar to Johnny Depp’s debut role in A Nightmare on Elm Street, a few other famous actors have made early appearances in many of the Friday the 13th.
With so many factions of this franchise, between movies, television series, video games, comics, and other spinoffs, it’s understandable to seek out a reference guide to help you understand how they all fit together chronologically. This article will clear things up, telling you how to watch the movies in order as well as prepare you for the newest addition to the franchise, Camp Crystal Lake, which will be a prequel television series from A24 and Brian Fuller on Peacock.
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Friday the 13th Movies in Order of Release
- Friday the 13th (1980)
- Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
- Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
- Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)
- Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
- Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
- Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
- Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
- Jason X (2002)
- Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
- Friday the 13th (2009)
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Friday the 13th Movies in Chronological Order
For the most part, the movies are already in chronological order... but then it gets a bit convoluted. Let’s break it down.
Friday the 13th (1980)
The original. Directed and produced by Sean S. Cunningham, this movie embraced the “campy” culture of 80s horror slashers, both figuratively and literally. The movie, set in 1979, focuses on a group of summer camp counselors who are preparing to reopen Camp Crystal Lake after it had been closed down after a series of mysterious and tragic events from 1958. As they arrive and settle in, a masked killer begins to kill each of them off one by one. Featuring Adrienne King, Betsy Palmer, and a very young Kevin Bacon, when this movie was released, it made any teenager wary of doing “normal teenager things” for a while. The Cabin In The Woods satirized this concept with the “survivor girl” being “pure,” in that she did not engage in drugs/alcohol or sexual encounters. There's a specific formula within the first four movies of the franchise that shows Jason killing people, only to leave their bodies in various places that the main protagonist discovers as she flees for her life. Without giving away the iconic surprise twist ending, the “survivor girl,” Alice (played by Adrienne King), manages to decapitate the killer after learning their tragic backstory.
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Set five years after the original story, Friday the 13th Part 2 opens up with Alice getting brutally attacked and murdered in her apartment by an unknown assailant. The movie then refocuses on a new group of teenage camp counselors as they prepare to reopen the camp, which was closed down again after the previous movie’s murders. Directed by Steve Miner (Lake Placid), the movie follows as each teen is once again picked off by Jason in an act of vengeance. Betsy Palmer reprises her role as Mrs. Voorhees once more and is joined by Amy Steel and John Furey. As the body count rises, tension and violence escalate to the climactic reveal of the killer’s true identity.
Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
The third installment of the franchise, also directed by Steve Miner, is the first movie where Jason actually puts on his iconic hockey mask for the first time. Picking up almost exactly where the previous film left off, it opens with a badly injured Jason Voorhees (played by the late Richard Brooker) going to a convenience store for a change of clothing, where he kills the store owners. We are then introduced to our new protagonist, Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell), a young woman traveling with a group of friends on their way to Chris’s family cabin by the lake, “Higgins Haven.” Little does she know that Jason is currently hiding in the barn by the lakehouse. As she and Rick (Paul Kratka) go on a walk together, she reveals to him that she had been attacked by a disfigured man two years prior and that her true purpose for returning to Crystal Lake is to face her fears and get closure. Upon their return, they find that Jason has already started his killing spree, with several of their friends already brutally killed. How will Chris manage to escape the silent murder machine that is Jason?
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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Once again picking up the day after the events from the previous film, the seemingly indestructible Jason (played by the late Ted White) hacks and slashes his way out of the local hospital’s morgue. Directed by Joseph Zito, this film was clearly intended to be the last, but Jason always manages to find a way to come back to life. He sets his sights on a new group of teenagers who are all preparing to spend the weekend at the lake. What sets this movie apart from the previous films, is that the day is saved by a young boy named Tommy (Corey Feldman), when he distracts Jason in order to save his mother. Usually, when you see a young kid in a horror movie, you know they’re likely to survive because they’re “innocent.” However, the last look that Feldman gives the camera at the end had audiences a little suspicious…
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)
Directed by Danny Steinmann, the movie was cast under a fake title, “Repetition,” essentially tricking the involved actors until they were officially cast. Lead actor John Shepherd reportedly admitted that he was disappointed when he realized he had signed on to create another Friday the 13th movie. This is also the first and only movie to portray Jason’s hockey mask with two blue triangles instead of the iconic three red triangles.
Set several years after the events from the previous movie, we are reintroduced to a teenage Tommy (Shepherd), who still struggles daily with his childhood encounter with Jason (played by Tom Morga in this installment). It took such a toll on his mental health that he had to become institutionalized. Freshly relocated to the Pinehurst Halfway House, he meets a group of other troubled teenagers. When bodies start piling up, fingers start getting pointed in every direction regarding who the killer could be, including Tommy.
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
The sixth installment of the franchise, directed by Tom McLoughlin, is also the last to feature Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) as the lead protagonist. Following the events from the previous movie, Tommy is finally released from the mental institution, even though he still suffers from nightmares and hallucinations about Jason (C.J. Graham). He returns to Crystal Lake, which has now been renamed Forest Green, to dig up Jason’s body and burn it so that he can finally put his mind at ease. When Tommy impales Jason’s body on a metal post, lightning strikes the corpse and reanimates it, giving Jason new superhuman strength. Once again, as the bodies begin to pile up, fingers are pointed at Tommy, who has been desperately trying to warn the police about Jason’s return. With only one person who believes him, Tommy and Megan (Jennifer Cooke), have to find a way to put Jason where he belongs… at the bottom of that lake.
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Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
This movie is the first to cast Kane Hodder as Jason, a role that he will reprise for the next two installments. At this point, Paramount Pictures was looking to create a crossover film with New Line Cinema’s slasher franchise Nightmare on Elm Street, which they did eventually get in 2003 (more on that later). Instead, writer Daryl Haney pitched the idea of a “Jason vs. Carrie” type of story, which director John Carl Buechner approved.
In this installment, we are introduced to Tina (Lar Park Lincoln), a teenage girl with psychokinetic powers, similar to Carrie from the movies of the same name. After accidentally killing her father with her abilities as a young child, she had to go to therapy to deal with her guilt. Following orders from her psychiatrist’s orders, she returns to the Lake where she drowned her father. The same lake that Jason remains, lurking below the surface. She inadvertently releases him from his watery prison, thus setting him loose to wreak havoc once again. Will her powers be strong enough to stop him?
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Directed by Rob Hedden (You May Not Kiss The Bride), the eighth installment of the Friday the 13th franchise is set in… you guessed it, Manhattan! But how does he get there? It begins when Jason (who is still chained to a boulder at the bottom of Crystal Lake at the beginning of the movie, becomes reanimated once more by a houseboat that damages electrical cables underwater. Jason, now free to hunt down some teens, sets his sights on a ship that is sailing to New York City that is full of graduating seniors from Lakeview High School. After barely escaping the deathly cruise ship, survivor girl Rennie (Jensen Daggett) desperately tries to evade Jason as he stalks her through the streets of Manhattan. With completely different surroundings, Jason does surprisingly well navigating the big city, killing anyone who gets in his way.
Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
With little to no explanation of how Jason survived the events that took place in Manhattan, he returns to Camp Crystal Lake to continue his reign of terror. The woman he stalks turns out to be an FBI agent who ambushes Jason and kills him, obliterating his body. In the morgue, the coroner becomes overwhelmed by a desire to consume Jason’s still-beating heart, allowing Jason to possess his body and escape once again. Now with the ability to possess others, Jason is able to become even more elusive. A bounty hunter who is tracking him, played by Steven Williams, learns that only a blood relative can permanently kill Jason. Inversely, if Jason possesses one of these remaining relatives, he will be restored back to his superhuman powers. As time runs out, who will get to Jason’s relatives first? Directed by Adam Marcus, this is the first Friday the 13th movie to be released since New Line Cinema took over the franchise. At the very end, you can hear Freddy Krueger’s laugh and see his iconic glove reach through the dirt and drag Jason’s mask to hell, hinting at what’s next to come.
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
Directed by Ronny Yu, the crossover between the Friday the 13th and Nightmare On Elm Street franchises was finally created. We last saw Freddy (Robert Englund) imprisoned in hell, unable to torment his victims and getting weaker and weaker. With the last of his powers, he resurrects Jason (Ken Kirzinger) to carry out killings in his name to strike fear back into the people of Springwood, giving Freddy his powers back. However, once he realizes he’s unleashed a monster he can’t control, Freddy decides to kill Jason himself, so he doesn’t have to compete for victims. This movie can also be watched as a standalone, but still makes sense chronologically after we see the teaser at the end of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
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The Standalone Friday the 13th Movies
The remaining movies in the franchise can be watched without having to see any of the other movies for context or continuity.
Jason X (2002)
This movie can be summed up in four words: Jason goes to space! After scientists tried without success to replicate Jason’s ability to regenerate seemingly fatal wounds on his body, Jason (played once more by Kane Hodder) wakes up and attacks the researchers. Lead scientist Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig), sacrifices herself to stop him, resulting in the both of them getting cryogenically frozen. Centuries in the future, after Earth became too polluted to live on, humans have relocated to “Earth II,” another planet that allows for human survival. On a research trip back to the original Earth, a professor and his students return to the abandoned facility where they discover LaFontaine and Jason still frozen. They revive her, but when Jason wakes up aboard their spacecraft, he goes on a murderous rampage.
Friday the 13th (2009)
As the twelfth installment in the franchise, this film is the first reboot of the original. Directed by Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), this movie goes back to the 80s origin story of Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears). After seeing his mother killed by one of the surviving camp counselors, a young Jason (Caleb Guss) vows to avenge her. Almost 30 years later, he kills a group of young adults who are trespassing on his territory, sparing a woman named Whitney (Amanda Righetti) because of her resemblance to his mother. When Whitney’s brother Clay (Jared Padalecki) comes searching for her, he runs into another group of people who are vacationing at their lakehouse. He convinces one of them to help him search for his sister, while Jason does what he does best. He begins to pick the rest of them off one by one.
The Friday the 13th franchise has built a huge following over the years, with several television series spinoffs such as Friday the 13th: The Series. Soon, most likely this year, Jason will return once more on Peacock with the prequel series. While the exact release date is yet to be announced, the project with be written by Brian Fuller and directed by Stephen Dodson (An Angry Man) and will feature Frank Volpe, Karle Gwen, Emily Meissner, and Jackie Watkins. As a prequel, we can only assume the plot will revolve around a younger Jason and the events that led up to his accidental death by drowning as a child while staying at Camp Crystal Lake.
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