Movie Review: Friday the 13th (1980)

It is an axiom that every Friday the 13th, the cult-classic horror movie will resurface in online and in person conversations. Not to mention the debate that people have had (for what I perceive) to be quite a long time: is Friday the 13th a good movie? Sean S. Cunningham's slasher movie revolves around a group of teenagers who are stalked and killed by an ambiguous murderer while staying at a summer camp. The movie is extremely low-budget and from the establishing shot we can tell that the shoe-string, B-movie feel is going to either sink or swim. Thirty seven years later, I think it simultaneously serves and dismembers itself. Friday the 13th is a fun watch that (if not taken too seriously) can be legitimately entertaining and scary. That being the case, the lack of a budget does show and it causes the film to not hold up as well all this time later. The acting is not on the table and character development seems to be the last thing the creators of Friday the 13th contemplated. Instead we get a shooting range for characters that we don't care about. For a ninety-minute runtime this was acceptable. This is a fun movie and it should be given credit for teaching aspiring filmmakers how a big budget is not always needed to make an enjoyable, campy (no pun attended) horror flick. There is also some really promising gore in this movie which I had forgotten since last watching this. Another great part of the film is how it ends. Without spoiling anything, Friday the 13th crafts it's ending in the perfect way to set up a sequel, and man are their tons. Between endless Jason movies, Freddy Vs. Jason, and a comic book series, there is certainly a lot of universe building when it comes to this franchise. It wasn't uncommon for that to happen either, Halloween did it, and even Pumpkinhead managed to establish a world of it's own. That said, the best film in the Friday the 13th series for a non-lore fan would be this one as it isn't trying to be a seed for forthcoming projects. Sure, it isn't perfect, but this is a far more suitable film than one might expect in the 21st century. Overall, Friday the 13th is an enjoyable, entertaining slasher movie that makes good utilization of a shoe string budget (even though sometimes it is two-fold) and delivers great bloody fun. Two stars= C+