How ‘Carrie’ Changed ‘Friday The 13th’s Ending (And Helped Create The Franchise)
Friday the 13th (1980) is one of the most important slasher films ever made, as it marked a new era of masked killers in Hollywood. Now, the film that was inspired by the success of Halloween (1978) inspired a slew of summer camp killers that populated most of the '80s.
But the one thing that made the first Friday the 13th stand out was the shocking return of Jason Voorhees from the still waters of Crystal Lake. It was an epic jump scare that defined the film, but it almost didn't happen had it not been for what Carrie (1976) did with its epic finale.
What Happens at the End of ‘Friday the 13th’ (1980)?
Friday the 13th plays out like a mystery in which a bunch of teenagers waiting to be camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake are picked off one by one. We don't ever see the face of the killer, but the kills themselves are so brutal it would make you think a man did it.
However, when it's revealed that the older Pamela Voorhees was killing in the name of her son, who drowned over a decade earlier due to teenage negligence, no one saw it coming. While Pamela didn't look like a killer, she was unhinged and brutal, and it took the film's final girl, Alice, to kill her.
Tired, Alice pushes herself off in a canoe to the center of the lake and awakens to see help on the way. But in a final jump scare, the corpse of Jason comes out and drags her under the water. We see it was just a nightmare Alice had, and she's safe and sound, but that one scare managed to redefine what we knew about the franchise from then on.
How Did ‘Carrie’ (1976) Impact ‘Friday the 13th’ (1980)?
Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) was the first film based on a Stephen King book, and also King's first published story as well. It was about a girl with psychic powers growing up and being bullied to the point of snapping and getting revenge. In the end, we see Carrie has died, and one of her classmates visits her grave to leave flowers. But as she puts them down, a hand grabs her from the grave, and we see it's a dream.
Makeup designer Tom Savini mentioned back in a 2006 interview that this shocking jump scare inspired him to push for Jason’s return. He mentioned: “So we thought that we need a ‘chair jumper’ like that and I said, ‘Let's bring in Jason…’”
Something as simple as that managed to deliver one of the best jump scares in all of horror. Granted, Carrie’s ending was filmed backward to give a dreamy quality, but what Friday the 13th did was just as interesting. We are given a sense of hope and peace as the terror was finally over, only to assault the viewer with the unexpected. What was inspired by one film would later inspire other horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), where peace is a fake-out.
‘Carrie’ (1976) Introduced an Epic Slasher Franchise and Never Even Knew It
Carrie isn't a movie that worked well as a franchise and instead has become the subject of more remakes than sequels. After decades, it's nearly impossible to top what has come before, even with the new Mike Flanagan Carrie (2026) series coming to Prime Video. But it still sparked an amazing franchise that's just as fun in its own way.
By having Jason return in a dream, it proved to be a passing-of-the-torch moment between mother and son because the moment he returned in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), we knew what was happening. Jason's dream sequence marked the true birth of Jason in the series and his arrival to the narrative. But if Carrie hadn't terrified its audiences years before with its finale jump scare, things could've been different.
Now, after over a dozen films and a new TV show with Crystal Lake (2026) coming to Peacock on October 15th, the Friday the 13th franchise has become a staple of slasher horror. It has changed and evolved into the supernatural and never looked back, and now, decades later, we can look at Carrie and thank it for what it spawned.
