20 Horror Movie Box Office Bombs EVERYONE Saw Coming

Within the Friday the 13th franchise, there has been a consistency that has to be respected. Yes, the films were largely terrible after the iconic original from 1980, but the first handful of sequels were made with similar production budgets and were all successful at the box office.

Even Jason Goes to Hell, the eighth installment in the franchise, coming nine years after the so-called Final Chapter, made five times its budget, in spite of being poorly received across the board. The formula, however, changed when the series was brought into the 21st century.

Previously, the budgets of the franchise had roughly ranged between $2-3 million, with Jason Takes Manhattan the outlier at the top end at $5 million. As said before, the formula worked, but in 2002, the budget was hiked up to an astonishing $15 million to put out Jason X, a huge upturn in costs that was never going to see a return on investment.

The entire brand of Friday the 13th was low-budget, and so when Jason X made $17 million, it was a major bomb. This return wasn't any less than could typically be expected from the series, but with such an inflated budget, any profit was always going to remain elusive. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The Friday the 13th movies never needed to be good, but they did need to be cheap.