Every ‘Friday the 13th’ Film, Ranked

3. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives

Jason Lives was the third and final movie to feature the Tommy Jarvis character, this time played by Thom Mathews. After surviving the massacre at the Pennsylvania halfway house in A New Beginning, Jarvis heads back to Crystal Lake to stop Jason from ever coming back, only to accidentally resurrect him instead. Perhaps he’d have been better off back in Pennsylvania.

This Friday the 13th movie’s approach was to present the film as more of a dark comedy. Before Scream would later go on to popularize the idea of horror movies mocking their own tropes, Jason Lives had used it with success. The humor in the movie pokes fun at slasher movies in general, while maintaining a dark, creepy tone so as not to simply become a spoof comedy film.

Jason Voorhees himself is deathly serious, so those afraid of the character will still be just as terrified. So featuring more comic relief than previous films didn’t hurt the credibility of Jason, as the killer himself was given due respect with the way he was presented on screen. He manages to get several trademark murders in before eventually being stopped, although by this point in the series we know he’ll be back soon.

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