10 Horror Movies That Just Aren’t Scary

The eighth outing for the Friday the 13th franchise, Jason Takes Manhattan is the series at its most unrelentingly cheesy.

While the Friday the 13th franchise as a whole has so often been laced in elements of kitsch, it’s fair to say that Jason Takes Manhattan is the first time that one of these movies doesn’t have any real scares. Sailing from Camp Crystal Lake to New York City, Jason Voorhees is once again up to his usual slash ‘n’ hack antics, yet this particular horror film is hugely short on actual frights.

The franchise itself had been painfully close to fully jumping the shark in several previous offerings, but Jason Takes Manhattan is the one where the over-the-top shenanigans of Friday the 13th reached a whole other level. Whether it’s a faux rock music video being filmed on the protagonists’ boat, whether it’s the cocaine-fuelled seduction of a school principal, whether it’s Jason punching an amateur boxer’s head off his shoulders, or whether it’s just the image of Jason Voorhees stood illuminated in the glitz of Times Square, this is ultimately a horror movie that just doesn’t feel scary on any level.

After eight films, the Friday the 13th series had finally succumbed to its own excesses – even if Jason Takes Manhattan is an absolute blast of a movie, just in an enjoyable fun-ride way, rather than a terrifying way.