Ranking All Friday The 13th Final Girls From Worst To Best

From Camp Crystal Lake, to Manhattan, to Space, to Elm Street.

by Andrew Pollard
Friday the 13th 2009 Whitney Miller
Paramount

Unbelievably, it's now been 12 years since a Friday the 13th movie has been released. While there have been countless plans in place for a return to Camp Crystal Lake, those plans have forever stalled due to the ongoing legal battle between the original film's director Sean S. Cunningham and original scribe Victor Miller.

Still, there are a whopping 12 F13 pictures to revisit while we all wait for this legal wrangle to hopefully wrap up, and so many of those films have some truly great horror heroes front-and-centre to fight the good fight and step up to (usually) Jason Voorhees.

It's on those heroes of the series that the attention is on here, as this list is all about assessing just who really is the best final girl of this most beloved horror franchise.

As a heads-up, there is no Tommy Jarvis here, although one could make a solid argument as to why Tommy could be included in such a list - with him having killed Jason, battled a Voorhees doppelganger, and then reanimated Crystal Lake's most infamous son.

With that in mind, then, here are the 12 final girls of the Friday the 13th franchise, ranked in order of how effective, resilient and generally badass they were during their appearances on the silver screen.

12. Jessica Kimble - Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday

Friday the 13th 2009 Whitney Miller
Paramount

For most Friday the 13th fans, hearing the words Jason Goes to Hell is enough to make them break out in a cold sweat.

Notoriously the Friday the 13th movie that featured an extremely minimal amount of the physical presence of Jason Voorhees, Jason Goes to Hell instead has the spirit of Jason passed from person to person after an impressive opening act that blows Voorhees into a gazillion pieces.

That inventive opening act is sadly where The Final Friday peaks, with Jason lulled into an FBI sting designed to destroy him. From there, the film goes off a cliff as we focus on a bounty hunter trying to stop the spirit of Voorhees from been passed to Jason's half-sister, his niece Jessica, and Jessica's daughter.

It's Kari Keegan's Jessica her ends up positioned as the final girl here, with the revelation that only someone related to Jason can ever truly kill him. A magical knife to the heart ends up doing the job for Jessica, but she rarely feels like a final girl - in the same way that Jason Goes to Hell rarely feels like a proper Friday the 13th film.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.