Every Friday The 13th Film Ranked From Worst To Best

Much as how innovation was the furthest thing from anyone's mind when the Friday the 13th series initially came to life, so too did the early 2000s see the studios shy away from almost anything new when it came to horror. 2003 saw Michael Bay's production house Platinum Dunes remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to big box office returns, so the company proceeded to remake every title with brand name recognition they could snap up.

Friday the 13th was a logical progression. However, in rebooting the franchise for the 2000s, Platinum Dunes and director Marcus Nispel deemed it neessary to adopt a harsher tone in-keeping with the decade's trend for downbeat, ordeal-based horror ('torture porn,' if you will). This approach, however, was wildly out of step for a series that had always been based first and foremost on being fun, without too much emphasis on pain and anguish.

While we can overlook the awkward way 2009's Friday the 13th attempts to condense the plots of the first two or three Fridays into one, the tonal problems are harder to forgive. It looks and feels dirty and dingy, and seems too anxious to be taken seriously, which is rather missing the point. The simple, frivolous joy of the originals is almost completely absent.

Even so, it must be acknowledged that the Friday the 13th remake does find room for some of franchise's simple joys, must notably with an abundance of gratuitous nudity, and almost certainly the best sex scene of the series.