New Line is really feeling the horror franchise love these days, and it’s been announced that they’re going to make a new Friday the 13th movie, with the release date set for Friday, October 13th. Why is that date so familiar? Give me a second, it’ll come back to me.
Anyway, the word is that the new installment of the adventures of Jason Voorhees (which, for those you with calendars, has nine months to go from an idea today to a finished film. That’s rushing it) will not be set in the year 4000 as a sequel to Jason X, but will rather be a prequel, which will be the origin of Jason.
A prequel is sort of a weird idea, though, since the first film in the series has served as a prequel to the nine Jason films, with his mom, Mrs.Voorhees, offing kids until her head excellently gets severed. In the final reel Mrs. Voorhees tells us that she’s doing all this because her sweet retarded son Jason drowned in Crystal Lake because some nasty teen camp counselors were busy getting nookie instead of watching him. So is that what the new movie is going to be about?
Doubtful. I imagine that the new film will throw all continuity (such as it is in this series) to the wind, and will come up with new, hip, explanations for where Jason got his hockey mask and al that. But can you really complain? The series has been at its nadir for some time – for the love of God, they killed Jason with toxic waste once – so any new blood could be good. I had heard rumblings of a Friday the 13th remake in the past – maybe that’s what this “prequel” really is.