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Fansided

Ranking every Friday the 13th film from worst to best

By Wesley Lara

LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 09: Actor Derek Mears arrives at the premiere of Warner Bros.' "Friday the 13th" at the Chinese Theater on February 9, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 09: Actor Derek Mears arrives at the premiere of Warner Bros.' "Friday the 13th" at the Chinese Theater on February 9, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) /
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5. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Directed by Ronny Yu

We have now officially entered blockbuster territory. Despite their monstrous success, the Friday the 13th films were always low-budget phenomenons and they were often treated as such. These were small films, even as they got popular, and they always carried this sense of “low-budget exploitation” to them. This all changed when Freddy Krueger got into the mix.

First teased at the end of Jason Goes to Hell, this villain confrontation was constantly stopped and started for over 15 years with talks starting as early as 1987. The confrontation was inevitable, but it wasn’t until the new millennium when we finally got to see the long-awaited monster duel.

But most of Freddy vs. Jason wasn’t even a duel, instead serving us a combined Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street film, as Freddy Krueger uses Jason Voorhees as a sort of vessel in getting people to fear him once again. With enough fear, he can become strong enough to infiltrate the nightmares of Elm Street folks again, but Jason may have other plans (in addition to killing every person in sight).

The story is…pretty sloppy and a product of many rewrites and abandoned ideas mismatched to form the final product. At the end of the day, it is yet another installment of bland teenagers running from a machete-wielding monster, just with Freddy in the background manipulating everything to be set in motion.

But still, I have a soft spot for this movie. Not only did it personally jump-start my interest in both of these franchises, but the film’s grand-scale blockbuster nature made the final product feel more important and epic in the long run.

“Freddy vs. Jason!! Take your picks!”, the iconic (and for some reason, deleted) line, is not just the culmination of the film’s build towards their incredibly entertaining final battle. It almost serves as a precursor of sorts to many of the blockbuster battle films we know today such as Captain America: Civil War, Batman v. Superman, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Freddy vs. Jason embraced its goofy personality and while it’s not the highest quality effort for either franchise, it still managed to stand as an appropriate swan song for both characters (until the reboots).