Joey Magidson
The Sunday Scaries are upon us once again! Yes, as the weekend concludes, most of us feel an oncoming sense of anticipatory dread about the week ahead. Anxiety about work manifests itself into a feeling that’s known as the Sunday Scaries. However, we at Awards Radar are here to combat that, by taking back the name. Now, we want you think about a horror-centric piece on the site when you hear the term. So, let us continue on with another installment of the Awards Radar Sunday Scaries! Today, we’re once again thinking and pondering the future of a classic horror villains, given the day that has just passed us by without a new entry in a certain franchise. Read on for more!
As you all know, two days ago was Friday the 13th, which got me thinking…why are we no closer to a new Friday the 13th film? I know I can’t be alone in this regard, either. About seven months ago, when the new Halloween movie came out, I wrote about how Jason and Freddy are in a limbo that Michael Myers just isn’t. This is some of that piece:
So, Michael Myers is continuing to have his moment. What about Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees? Why have efforts to keep their franchises going been so difficult, while Halloween never seems to be a hard sell? Obviously, legal rights and various non-creative issues are at play, but that can’t be the only reason. Can Hollywood ever figure out Freddy and Jason (and ideally not another Freddy vs. Jason) like they’ve seemed to have figured out Michael? The prior efforts were mediocre (at best) Platinum Dunes efforts, so the bar isn’t particularly high, that’s for sure.
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Jason Vorhees, on the other hand, never talks. Hell, in the original Friday the 13th, he wasn’t even the killer. Jason didn’t take up the violent mantle until the sequels, and no one has ever really made a top-tier new installment since (and even saying that about Friday The 13th Part II is a stretch). Filmmakers have gotten desperate over the years, sending him misguidedly to New York and even into space with the almost fun Jason X. As a big lumbering killer, Jason is a brute, so it takes more to make him interesting, plain and simple.
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Rebooting Friday the 13th means figuring out if you want Jason to even be the bad guy, but one has to assume that will be the case. Finding a way to make Camp Crystal Lake scary shouldn’t be hard, but some degree of style is required here. It’s not like Freddy where the dream aspect will let a visual filmmaker run wild, but someone creative with gore could have a blast. The hulking villain, all power and force, can wreck things and cause havoc if some storyteller finds a good reason. Easier said than done, but this series can certainly look at the new Halloween flicks as a template.
So, will this ever change? There’s apparently rights issues and legal entanglements to figure out, but it seems inevitable that Jason will kill again. Friday the 13th, especially once Halloween wraps up this year, has a perfect window to strike. It just already had an even better one, which they let slip away here in 2022.
What this all comes down to is the simple fact that when the calendar tends to feature Friday the 13th, why not try to have a Friday the 13th flick to take advantage of that? When it’s clear that a studio is leaving money on the table, you know something is a miss. We shall see what ultimately becomes of Jason, but we should have seen him again this weekend, and that’s a shame…
Stay tuned for another Sunday Scaries installment next week!
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