An opening kill from the unmade Friday the 13th sequel has been revealed. The horror franchise began with the 1980 slasher Friday the 13th, which followed counselors being murdered as they worked to reopen the supposedly cursed Camp Crystal Lake. Although the character of Jason Voorhees was introduced as a child in the original, he didn’t appear in his iconic form as a fully-grown killer until Friday the 13th Part 2. He returned in eight more sequels, the Elm Street crossover Freddy vs. Jason, and the 2009 remake Friday the 13th, which combined elements from the first four movies.
In honor of the date being Friday, October 13, screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift shared a script page describing the opening kill of the unmade sequel to their 2009 Friday the 13th remake. Check it out below:
The kill was part of an extended opening sequence featuring an unrelated Jason rampage, much like the introduction of the 2009 movie, though this time it would have had a winter setting before resuming the main plot in summer. The pages introduce a character named Val, whose drunken ziplining excursion is brutally cut short when Jason halves her with his machete.
This Unused Kill Bridged the Gap Between the Old and New Friday the 13th
The violent kill depicted in Shannon and Swift’s pages is in keeping with the tone of the Friday the 13th remake. While that movie utilized many of the elements of the original movies, it featured a heightened sense of brutality that was more in keeping with the modern era of remakes and torture-focused franchises like Saw and Hostel. This is in fact showcased the most in the opening sequence of Friday the 13th (2009), which features a kill where a young person is roasted alive in her sleeping bag over a campfire.
However, the setup for this kill also hearkens back to the original era of Friday the 13th movies. It wasn’t uncommon for Jason Voorhees to murder his victims while they were indulging in a leisure activity, especially one that was related to the goings-on of a summer camp. Over the years, he has murdered characters who were on the archery range, swimming, walking on their hands, and even dancing The Robot.
This kill would have been another way the new franchise could have modernized the original movies without sacrificing their playful approach to horror mayhem. In fact, it closely resembles a kill from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning where a character is driving a motorcycle, allowing Jason to use his forward momentum to decapitate him with a quick motion from a machete. While this unmade movie will likely remain that way, it’s possible that the upcoming Friday the 13th prequel show Crystal Lake that is currently in development at Peacock could find a similar way to combine nostalgia and modernity.
