Every Friday The 13th movie ranked from worst to best

Clockwise from bottom right: Friday The 13th Part 2, Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (Screenshots: YouTube/Paramount Pictures); and Jason X (Screenshot: YouTube/New Line Cinema).Graphic: Karl Gustafson

“Jason was my son … and today is his birthday,” Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) says coldly in Friday The 13th, Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 seminal slasher, just before she carves up camp counselors as revenge for letting her boy, Jason, drown in Crystal Lake years earlier. “Those counselors were making love while that young boy drowned!” the exasperated mother explains. Of course, Jason didn’t actually die, and the masked maniac, who really knows his away around a machete, has returned for 11 more movies—including a face-off with A Nightmare On Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger and a 2009 reboot—to punish horny teens and young adults for their carnal priorities and lousy work ethic.

While the Friday The 13th films have been wildly inconsistent over the years—blame it on multiple studios, a string of directors, recast characters, and shifting censorship rules—they remain a horror touchstone. As does the iconic Jason, who ranks alongside Freddy Krueger, Dracula, Frankenstein, Pinhead, and the rest in Hollywood’s monster pantheon. In fact, Friday The 13th is the second-highest-grossing horror franchise of all time behind Halloween—the seasonal fright flick that inspired Jason’s series. So in celebration of this month’s actual Friday the 13th, we’re looking back at every movie in the fan-favorite slasher series and ranking the films from worst to best. Read on to find out which Friday The 13th movie is a cut above the rest.