How (and Where) to Watch the Friday the 13th Movies in Order

The 1980s were easily the most prolific time for the Friday the 13th franchise—a decade when Paramount studios churned them out almost annually. The first eight instalments were released between 1980 and 1989 and introduced audiences to an iconic new slasher in Jason Voorhees—although he didn’t arrive fully formed as the hockey mask wearing psychopath.

As anyone who saw the original Scream will likely remember, the killer in the first Friday the 13th isn’t Jason but his mother, Pamela, who’s actually out to avenge Jason’s death after he drowns in the lake while attending summer camp—which is, of course, bad news for the camp counsellors. 

Released one year later, Friday the 13th Part II flipped the script by confirming that Jason never died, that he’s now fully grown, and that he’s out to avenge his mother’s death in the most gruesome ways imaginable—at least for the time.

This sequel set the gleefully gnarly tone for the series going forward—firstly by killing off Alice Hardy (the original film’s final girl) in the opening moments, before going on to make a killing at the box office. 

It takes three years and three movies, but Jason Vorhees finally nails his iconic look in Friday the 13th Part III, picking up a hockey mask to hide his face after an early massacre of unlucky adolescents.

Again, for various reasons, the filmmakers chose not to continue on with the previous movie’s final girl, Ginny Field. Instead, Dana Kimmell’s Chris Higgins takes over where Field left off and ultimately gets one over on the franchise’s big bad—not that he ever stays dead for very long.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, like previous installments, starts directly after the events of the last movie. This one is far from the most inventive episode in the series—with Jason neatly going through another cycle of resurrection, rampage, and apparent death before the credits roll.

What it does have that the others don’t, however, is Corey Feldman. The star of such legendary ‘80s movies as The Goonies and The Burbs appears late on as Tommy Jarvis—a teenager who ends up being the last man standing. 

By Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, the series had admittedly gone a bit off the rails—but if you’re invested in the franchise and don’t mind a little narrative insanity, you’ll probably have plenty of fun with it.

For A New Beginning, Tommy returns—now played by John Shepard—as a teenager who is haunted by Jason in his nightmares. This one takes place in an institution (similar to the one in Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) and features a few cases of mistaken identity. 

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is the sixth feature in the franchise and the third and final installment to center on Tommy Jarvis—who again is recast here, with Thom Matthews taking over as the grown up version of the character. 

Credit to Jason Lives, the movie boasts an admirably crazy plot—in which Tommy returns to Crystal Lake to burn Jason’s remains in the hope of saving his sanity but inadvertently brings him back to life thanks to an unlucky lightning strike. You probably won’t see that in Scream 7.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood has a surprisingly interesting origin story. First, the studio wanted to make a crossover with Nightmare on Elm Street (we will revisit this plan later in the list) but couldn’t quite pull it off. Instead, they settled on something akin to Jason vs. Carrie, pitting their monster up against a girl with telekinetic powers.

This gives the seventh instalment of the long-running franchises more of a supernatural vibe than previous instalments. It was also directed by John Carl Buechler, a special effects wizard responsible for bringing classics like Re-Animator and Troll to life—so if you’re a fan, you might be particularly keen to check this one out. 

Although most of the films take place around the infamous Crystal Lake, the franchise occasionally allows Jason to rampage in other locales—which is never not fun. The first instalment to really explore this was Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan—in which (you guessed it) Jason stabs and slashes his way through a very 1989 looking New York City. 

Following on from New Blood, Jason Takes Manhattan saw the franchise, for better and worse, becoming a good bit more self aware and taking a few more risks. Imagine Friday the 13th but through the lens of a movie like The Warriors and you’ll have a vague idea. 

After 1984’s The Final Chapter, Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday was the second movie in the series to wrongly predict Vorhees’ ultimate demise. It came four years after Takes Manhattan—which was at that time the longest wait between movies.

That happened because New Line Pictures acquired the rights to the franchise. They then promptly decided to make the most insane movie in the series yet—one that sees Jason blown up with a grenade launcher in the opening scene, but then possess the coroner who eats his heart for some reason. 

The final instalment in our chronological rundown is 2002’s Jason X, which takes place some 400 years in the future, where Jason is woken from a cryosleep in space. Yes, in space.

Directed by James Isaac (a special effects guru and creature maker who’d worked on Return of the Jedi and The Fly), Jason X has the inventive and playful energy of a B movie classic but sadly failed to acquire cult status or inspire much action at the box office. An interesting experiment all the same.