While 2009’s Friday the 13th remake was a surprisingly solid addition to the slasher franchise, it would have been better if the reboot didn’t feel the need to function as a Jason Voorhees origin story. The origins of Jason Voorhees are a little confusing, to say the least. The Friday the 13th slasher franchise villain might be one of the most famous faces in the history of horror cinema, but that doesn’t mean that his backstory makes much sense.
The original Friday the 13th killer Pamela Voorhees murdered a string of camp counselors because she felt they were responsible for the death of her young son, Jason, decades earlier. However, the Friday the 13th sequels saw Jason Voorhees killing countless teens to avenge his mother’s death, meaning he never died in the first place. The Friday the 13th franchise hand-waved this issue by explaining that Jason returned from the dead at some point between movies, with each subsequent sequel making him less human and more supernatural until he was essentially a demonic entity by the end of the original series.
As a result of this complicated, contradictory character history, it makes sense that 2009’s Friday the 13th remake felt the need to give the character a clearer, more consistent origin story. However, the weakest elements of 2009’s Friday the 13th remake, like explaining the origins of Jason’s mask and a nonsensical prologue that has Jason witnessing his mother’s murder (even though his mother was theoretically murdering counselors to avenge his death), can be traced back to the movie’s status as a Jason backstory. The creators said they didn’t want to make the reboot an origin story and it shows, with the details laced throughout the remake ending up more confusing than fun, clarifying, or engaging. While the Friday the 13th remake is solid, it would have been stronger if Jason arrived into the plot fully formed as his memorably scary self and the story focused solely on its characters and their attempts to evade him.
Instead, the Friday the 13th remake took a disappointing, noncommittal approach to Jason’s backstory. This was exacerbated by the problem that, unlike Nightmare On Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Jason didn’t have much of a backstory to illustrate. Scenes like the villain attacking and killing a local loner served to explain how he found his iconic hockey mask, but that wasn’t a question that many franchise fans were desperate to find the answer to and the sequence didn’t tell viewers anything new about Jason’s character or personality.
What made this a major problem for the reboot was the fact that Friday the 13th’s 2009 remake already had too many characters. In an attempt to break from the formula of the sequels, the reboot focused not only on a group of partying college friends but also on Jared Padalecki’s brooding hero who was searching for his lost sister. While Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake had its own problems, that reboot at least switched its focus entirely to Michael Myers (for better or worse). Friday the 13th’s 2009 remake, in contrast, split its story between some unlikable teens, a forgettable hero, and Jason’s origin story, meaning none of these story strands got the focus they needed.
