Friday the 13th Film Analysis

Friday the 13th starts on a Friday the 13th in 1958 at camp Crystal lake. A group of Counsellor’s are singing around a camp fire, two of them sneak off to have sex and are murdered by an unseen killer. The film then cuts to 1980 Friday the 13th and the camp is being reopened by Steve Christy. One of the teen counsellors, Annie who is going to be the cook is on her way to the camp, passing through a village where she receives a lift half way to the camp by a friendly truck driver. The village-crazy warns them that the camp has a death curse before she gets in Enos’s truck. When Enos drops her off she unwittingly hitchhikes and ends up in the antagonist’s car, who slits her throat with a hunting knife. The rest of the teenagers are in camp when the town crazy comes and tells them they are all doomed. Ignored, he bikes away and the killer comes and kills all the teenagers apart from the one final girl who survives by killing the killer who turns out to be the Mother of a boy who drowned under the care of past counsellors. Just as she thinks she’s safe after beheading the killer and is now in the middle of the lake on a boat the drowned boy ‘Jason’ jumps out of the water and drags here down. She wakes up and is told she was found in the boat unconscious and no-one else had seen Jason. We are left knowing that he is still out there. The film follows a typical narrative of a slasher horror movie. The movie starts off with an equilibrium (Sort of there’s already been a murder and the camp is already said to be cursed, but all of the protagonists are still alive). But then one of the girls are murdered, which puts an enigma into the story. The rest of the teenagers are systematically murdered, until one (The final girl) kills the murderer, effectively ending the enigma and restoring equilibrium within the film, however at the end the killer’s supposedly dead son jumps out of the water and drags the final girl down. The girl wakes up alive in hospital but the fact that Jason is alive re-instates the enigma and leaves the film open for a sequel. The film uses the classical representation of women throughout the story. Girls who have sex and smoke weed die in the film and there is one final girl who is the heroin of the film who defeats the evil. At the very beginning of the film a teenage girl and boy go off to have sex. They are both murdered. Then the girl named April gets into a car after hitch hiking it down. From the point of her entering the car we see her from the driver’s (the killer’s) point of view (male gaze theory), even when the killer chases April into the woods and slits her throat we see everything in the killer’s eyes putting us in the killer’s shoes. Marcie has sex in the film, and after her boyfriend is killed she is stalked through the bathroom in her underwear by the killer before being killed with a hatchet. Brenda Who has the idea of smoking grass while playing strip monopoly is again murdered in her underwear, away from the camp after being stalked through the archery target practice area. There is then the final girl called Alice who despite temptation undergoes no sexual activity. She is also the heroine, killing the murderer by beheading her with her own knife. Alice has masculine qualities about her which are seen when she undergoes manual tasks like nailing roof felt. However there are also some unconventional representations of women in horror films such as the killer or antagonist being female rather than male. Also she is a mother doing this for the revenge of her now dead son. Other than that the film follows some of the same basic character structures as Prop’s theory. The Villain is Mrs Voorhees, the Avenging Mother of Jason (who is the killer throughout the rest of the Franchise), a child who drowned due to the carelessness of the camp councillors previous to the film. The Hero/final girl is Alice, who stops and kills Mrs Voorhees by beheading her. Furthermore there is a group of troublesome teenagers who have loose morals who die.