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Critics Consensus: Rather quaint by today's standards, Friday the 13th still has its share of bloody surprises and a '70s-holdover aesthetic to slightly compel.
Critic Consensus: Rather quaint by today's standards, Friday the 13th still has its share of bloody surprises and a '70s-holdover aesthetic to slightly compel.
All Critics (51) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (20) | DVD (12)
It's blatant exploitation of the lowest order.
For all its shoddiness, the film manages, just barely, to achieve its ignoble goals -- it delivers what it promises.
A tame, poorly plotted serving of schlock, less horrific for its ketchup-smeared murders than for the bare-faced fashion in which it tries and fails to rip off Carpenter's Halloween in matters of style and construction.
The whole film is one of the best arguments for resuming movie censorship to come along in years.
The final reel reveal of the killer (not Jason) kicks the film into a higher gear.
Cunningham skilfully works up plenty of gory scares, while also allowing the audience to sympathise with the counsellors.
It depicts what is surely the first recorded instance of the game "Strip Monopoly" and would later inspire Wet Hot American Summer, and we should all be grateful for that.
Beware of this infamous, sadistic slasher film.
It hasn't aged well; its nonstyle renders it pretty sedate these days.
Within the dead-teenie realm it achieves a certain classicism
Has there ever been a more unimaginative exercise in big-screen terror?
What makes the movie work is that the slasher genre hadn't been set in stone yet, and some choices that director Sean S. Cunningham makes in the film that work against type.
When you think that this is the first movie of the infamous long series, it is hard to believe that the one that started it all is so awful and sluggish, and yet it did help shape the conventions of the slasher subgenre and at least has a good cinematography and great makeup effects.
Super Reviewer
The killer surprised me a little bit. Expected someone else rather than...(see for yourself ).
This is the film that launched the most successful Horror franchise in the history of the United States. It spawned 9 sequels, a crossover with Freddy Krueger, an eventual reboot, and a whole host of imitators. It was originally made to cash in on the success of the most brilliant slasher movie of all-time, John Carpenter's "Halloween". Needless to say, it took on a life of it's own. Many would argue that this is the best of the Friday the 13th movies, and it's not difficult to understand their argument. After all, this was the birth of some of the most iconic characters in the history of Horror. I'm sure that it also benefited from being released prior to the eventual saturation of the slasher genre. Sean Cunningham was able to produce an ominous atmosphere, in what was probably one of the best settings ever imagined for a Horror movie. This film, along with it's sequels, had a pronounced influence on me as a child, so I'll always give Friday the 13th credit, at least from a nostalgic standpoint. Unfortunately, I don't consider Friday the 13th that great of a movie. To me, much of the appeal of a "Friday the 13th" movie, was watching Jason kill people. The initial installment borrowed heavily from the Italian films, that were very influential at the time. The camera normally pans the surroundings with a voyeuristic approach. So in most cases, you're witnessing events from the viewpoint of the killer. It is effective at times, but it has never been my favorite technique. True to the Italian formula, the mysterious killer isn't revealed until the film's climax. In Friday the 13th, this results in a largely embarrassing cat fight between Pamela Voorhees and the "Alice" character. Further complaints would include the overly methodical pace, and the fact that after 30 years, the film hasn't aged well at all. This is probably one of the better installments in the series, which might not be saying that much. You can certainly do worse if you're sitting down with a Friday the 13th movie, but there are far more entertaining slasher movies to spend your time on too.
Doesn't deserve classic status among top shelf horror greats like "Halloween" and " A Nightmare on Elm Street", but it certainly isn't that bad. The film has some good cinematography and has that old school horror feeling I love that just isn't there among horror films these days, but the script is lacking. If they would have gone with the "fake" ending I think it would have been a little stronger, but taken as it is Friday the 13th is just a mildy fun, but disposable horror film that for whatever reason gets cited among great films.
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