8 Easy Steps To Make The Next Friday The 13th Great
4. Tone Down The Over-The-Top Kills
As the franchise got older and Jason grew into more of a superhuman, each film seemed intent on upping the sheer ridiculousness of the kills themselves. What started out as some relatively inspired forms of slashing and gashing was reduced to ludicrous boxing sequences and Jason punching a man's head clean off.
While this was mostly done in good campy fun, a new installment would do well to tone things back a bit. Audiences are accustomed to such kills now, meaning that the film must instead go for a different kind of scare to be truly effective. Instead, a new film should root the kills themselves in character and theme.
A wonderful example of how to do this comes in a scene from Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. In the scene, a man pulverizes another man's face in with a glass bottle without the bottle ever breaking. It's uncomfortably repulsive to watch and absolutely gets under your skin in the worst (read: best) possible way.
Give us kills that feel so uncomfortably intimate and real that we are forced to bask in them with Jason. It's the exact opposite of what general audiences would expect from this franchise and that's exactly what would make it so terrifying.