TheFriday the 13thremake is celebrating its 15th anniversary. When it opened on Jun 26, 2025, there were hopes that new life had been given to Jason Voorhees and his murderous rampages across Crystal Lake. The character had already taken Manhattan, was dragged to hell, took a trip to outer space, and even crossed over withA Nightmare on Elm Street’sFreddy Krueger, so dipping his toes into the remake waters seemed like an inevitable destination.
It would be more polished, with a fresh-faced cast, and the creatives behind it vowed it would stay true to the franchise, but despite debuting with very impressive numbers, the remake quickly died at the box office, and it wasn’t just due to bad critical reviews. Bad reviews have always been associated with the series, and it remained relatively successful despite that. What became evident was that the fan response was also polarizing. Instead of reinvigorating the franchise, it seemed to stall its momentum before alegal battle over rightsbecame a final girl that Jason Voorhees would take years to overcome.
In an attempt to please all the fans, the creatives put themselves in a position to potentially disappoint them more. Screenwriters Mark Swift and Damian Shannon had to task themselves withrebooting a filmthat also included the familiar beats and elements fans were accustomed to. Their solution proved to be one of their biggest mistakes, and that was to not only remake the signature first film but also, in a sense, reboot the first four Friday the 13th movies.
The Friday the 13th Remake Tries to Do Too Much
With this approach, the remake condenses theoriginalFriday the 13thfilminto a black-and-white prologue that lasts only two minutes and features Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees (Nana Visitor), giving a teenage girl and the audience a proper plot summary as to why this is all happening. She’s killed all the others that allowed her son to drown, and she’s the last one.
In a sort of homage to Betsy Palmer’s dialogue as the character, she exclaims, “Jason was my son! You should have been watching him!” It explains the story’s beginnings to the uninitiated, but it feels poorly expositional and rushed to fans already familiar with the lore. It ends with the teenage girl getting the upper hand and Pamela losing her head as a young Jason watches. Once he collects her head, he imagines it’s telling him to avenge her death by killing anyone who gets close to Crystal Lake. All of it feels like some weird filler between the original film andFriday the 13 Part 2.
Friday the 13th Remake Writers Reveal Killer Opening Sequence From Their Unmade Sequel
Jason Voorhees graphically does away with a zipline rider to open Friday the 13th’s (2009) unmade sequel.
As the film cuts to the present day, the movie offers up its best section, which only proves disappointing because the rest of the project doesn’t live up to such an impressive start. A group of teenagers, all good-looking and fitting the mold of the typicalFriday the 13thvictim, are gathered together, looking for some mythical field that possesses weed they intend to steal, indulge in, and sell.
The opening segment is over 20 minutes and could be its own compellinghorror short film. By the time Jason emerges to splatter up the bunch, wearing the burlap sack that is a nod to the second film, it’s a visceral experience that potentially bodes well for what’s to come. Before Jason swipes at Righetti’s Whitney Miller, the scene cuts to the main title card, a moment that likely garnered huge cheers from the audience. The problem with the opening is that, despite coming out of the gate with such fire, the scene’s outcome leads to another of the film’s mistakes.
Jason ends up sparing the life of Whitney and kidnapping her because she looks like his dead mother. This could reference a moment at the end ofPart 2when Ginny (Amy Steel) stumbles upon Jason’s headless shrine to his mom and throws on her sweater to distract him enough with psychology to take him out. If that was the intended reference, it’s too minuscule to make much sense because the Jason fans know and love would not have done this.
As played by stuntman Derek Mears, who gives it his all and is one of the film’s bright spots, Jason becomes a crazed survivalist. His murders go beyond just avenging his mother because they’re also about protectingCamp Crystal Lake, which is his home. By kidnapping Whitney, he’s making her the new “mother” of his abode and will do anything to kill those who try to infiltrate his cozy existence. Some of these changes do work. Jason runs at full speed toward most of his victims instead of going after them with a slow, lumbering walk, and he’s much smarter than previous takes on the character, setting fairly elaborate traps in his own version ofHome Alone. Some of these character beats work fine on their own, but the hostage situation with Whitney softens the character in an almost unrecognizable way, no matter how gruesome his kills are.
However, Jason isn’t the only one who wants Whitney. Since she has gone missing, her brother Clay (Jared Padalecki) is searching for her, and we are introduced to a would-be hero pretty late in the game because now 25 minutes have passed. He seems to be the only person concerned with the well-being of his loved one because not one friend or relative of the hacked-up teens from the opening shows up in any meaningful way.
As if the horny teenagers from the opening weren’t enough, Clay stumbles upon another set of sure-to-be victims in his search for his sister. They’re at Camp Crystal Lake to party in a cabin owned by Trent (Travis Van Winkle), a character soover-the-topdouchey that the audience is fully aware that the only satisfaction will be to see him die horrifically.
The cabin is also filled with other character types, including the obvious final girl, or so it seems, Jenna (The Flash’sDanielle Panabaker), token Black guy Lawrence (Arlen Escarpeta), stoned-out Chewie (Aaron Yoo), promiscuous blonde Bree (Julianna Guill), and horny couple that goes off to die, Nolan (Ryan Hansen), and Chelsea (Willa Ford). It’s clear that Trent, who dates Jenna, is likely awful enough to be cheating on her (he is), and, of course, she’s the only person who takes heed or cares about Clay and the quest for his missing sister. She’s so wonderfully likable that she’s the only one of the new crew the audience hopes escapes all of this, along with Clay and, hopefully, Whitney.
However, in an unnecessarily cruel misstep, once Jason sets this new group of young adults in his sights, Jenna doesn’t make it until the end and is killed before the credits roll. Some might think this was done to shock the audience, but since she’s the only character in this other new group we’ve met with a semblance of depth, the decision to kill her feels highly questionable.
The rest of the film is a bit of a been-there-done-that third act that has Clay finally finding his sister in Jason’s lair and them teaming up to ultimately defeat Jason courtesy of not only a machete but a wood chipper for good measure. When it’s all said and done, they dump his body into Crystal Lake and mind-numbingly set up shop on the dock to take in their victory, only to have Jason re-emerge for onefinal jump scareto end the film. Maybe that was an homage to his surprise appearance on Alice as he comes out of the lake as a deformed boy in the first movie, but, for the remake, it just feels like a cheap and silly way to end the film.
WhenFriday the 13thopened, there was a sense of excitement within the fanbase during that opening weekend. Fans hadn’t seen Jason on the big screen since 2003’sFreddy Vs. Jasonand the trailers for the reboot made it seem like a fresh way to reinvigorate a franchise that was in desperate need of it. Reviews were not great, registering a 25 percent rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, but fans couldn’t care less about what most critics think. The franchise has always been the punching bag of critics, and this was nothing new.
Poor Word of Mouth Quickly Derailed the Friday the 13th Remake
Friday the 13th
The financial news for the remake was stellar at the start. The movie opened to $43.5 million over the President’s Day holiday and even scored $19.2 million on its opening Friday, which happened to beFriday the 13th. At the time, it was the best 3-day weekend opening for any horror film, and its opening weekend already made it the secondhighest-grossing filmin the franchise (behind the $82.6 million domestic take ofFreddy vs. Jason). Also, of the horror movie remakes that emerged in the wake of 2003’sThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this represented their best start so far. That must’ve meant things could only be good from there…or so it seemed.
Friday the 13th: How a Prequel Could Reignite the Slasher Franchise
The Friday the 13th franchise was more interesting before Jason Voorhees became a horror icon.
Fans weren’t entirely pleased with what they saw, and it seemed to go along with the poor critical notices. The movie received a “B-” CinemaScore from opening day audiences, indicating a mixed response, and the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is also on the low end at 47 percent. This could explain why, despite that huge opening weekend, the movie fell like a rock in week two by 80.4 percent to $7.9 million, dropping from first place to sixth place. The movie ultimately had no sustainable legs, leaving the top ten after dropping another 53.6 percent in its third weekend. By the end of its run, the film earned a domestic total of $65 million. When looking at that $43.5 million opening figure, it’s easy to tell that the remake didn’t have a long theatrical life.
With a $19 million budget and a worldwide take of $92.7 million, the remake was financially successful on paper, but it was clear that its short shelf life in theaters signaled a problem with the film as a whole. Despite their ambitious attempts to polish things up and repackage the brand, Platinum Dunes didn’t fully understand the franchise. All the little creative changes that were made along the way indicated that they tried to do too much (shoehorning elements of the first four movies into the reboot) and that they were more interested in the name alone generating interest and box office heat rather than focusing in on what the fans have loved about the series since it began in 1980.
A release date for a sequel was set in October 2009 for Aug 02, 2025, but it was ultimately pulled from the release schedule and was delayed indefinitely. Perhaps it was even clear to them that they made mistakes with the reboot and didn’t know where to take it next that would please the fans. Even though Damian Shannon and Mark Swift were said to have finished a script for a follow-up in 2011, nothing came of it, and Warner Bros. relinquished their film rights to the franchise to Paramount Pictures. In the years since the franchise was tied up in so much litigation over rightsand various lawsuits, it became its own horror film.
The future of the franchise is still uncertain. There are talks of a reboot being developed by original director Sean S. Cunningham, while Peacock has theprequel seriesCrystal Lake, created by Brian Fuller in collaboration with A24, in the works, although when it sees the light of day remains to be seen. Whatever the future holds, it’s interesting to look back on the fact that, 15 years ago,Friday the 13thhad a real chance to re-enter the horror genre space in a significant way, but the ball was ultimately dropped, sending Jason Voorhees back to the very depths of Crystal Lake.TheFriday the 13thremake is available to stream on Max.
