Jason Voorhees drowned as a boy at Camp Crystal Lake in 1957, and his mother Pamela kills the counsellors she blames, until she is beheaded in 1980. Jason takes over, putting on his hockey mask and dying and returning again and again, through Tommy Jarvis, a telekinetic teen, a boat to Manhattan, body-hopping, a fight with Freddy Krueger and a trip to the year 2455. A 2009 remake starts the story over in its own continuity.
- Recapped
- 12
- Watch time saved
- 18 hours
- Latest
- 2009
No. 01 · 1980 · Film
Friday the 13th recap
In 1958, two counsellors at Camp Crystal Lake are murdered while sneaking off to be alone, and the camp closes. In 1980, Steve Christy is reopening it, and a group of young counsellors, including Alice, Bill, Brenda, Ned, Jack and Marcie, arrive to get it ready, ignoring warnings from locals who call it Camp Blood. A hitchhiking cook is killed before she gets there. On a stormy night, an unseen killer picks the counsellors off one by one: Jack is stabbed through a bed from beneath, Marcie is hit with an axe, and the others disappear. Alice finds the bodies of her friends and is left alone. A friendly middle-aged woman arrives, saying she is Pamela Voorhees, an old friend of the Christys.
How Friday the 13th ends
Mrs. Voorhees is the killer. Her son Jason drowned at the camp in 1957 while the counsellors weren't watching, and she has been taking revenge ever since. After a long chase, Alice beheads her with a machete on the beach. Alice drifts in a canoe on the lake, and a decomposed boy, Jason, leaps from the water and drags her in. She wakes in hospital; the police say there was no boy, and she says he is still out there.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 02 · 1981 · Film
Friday the 13th Part 2 recap
Two months after the first film, Alice is murdered at home by an unseen killer who leaves Pamela's severed head in her fridge. Five years later, Paul Holt runs a counsellor training camp on the edge of Crystal Lake, and among the trainees is his girlfriend Ginny, a child psychology student. Paul tells the legend of Jason, who never drowned and saw his mother killed. Most of the trainees go to town for a last night out, and those who stay behind are murdered by a man with a sack over his head. Ginny and Paul return to find the bodies, and Paul disappears in an attack. Ginny flees into the woods and finds Jason's shack, which holds a shrine with his mother's head and her sweater.
How Friday the 13th Part 2 ends
Ginny puts on Pamela's sweater and pretends to be his mother, calming Jason long enough to strike him with his machete. Paul reappears, and they leave him for dead. Back at the cabin, Jason crashes through a window, and in the morning Ginny is carried to an ambulance asking where Paul is. His fate is never shown, and Pamela's head is left in the shack.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 03 · 1982 · Film
Friday the 13th Part III recap
The day after Part 2, the wounded Jason kills a couple at a lakeside store and heads to Higgins Haven, a farmhouse near Crystal Lake. Chris Higgins brings her friends there for a weekend, along with her ex-boyfriend Rick. Chris tells Rick that two years earlier she was attacked in the woods by a disfigured man. A biker gang the group crossed at a shop turns up for revenge, and Jason kills them. The joker Shelly scares the others with a hockey mask, and when Jason kills him, he takes it, wearing it for the first time. One by one Jason murders the group, and Chris returns to find everyone dead.
How Friday the 13th Part III ends
Chris hangs Jason from the barn loft and drives an axe into his head, and she escapes in a canoe. She sees Jason at the window, then Pamela Voorhees rises from the lake to pull her under, and it turns out to be a nightmare. The police take Chris away in shock, and Jason lies in the barn, apparently dead.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 04 · 1984 · Film
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter recap
Jason is taken to the county morgue after the events at Higgins Haven, where he wakes up and kills a coroner and a nurse. He heads back to Crystal Lake. A group of friends rents a house next door to the Jarvis family, Trish and her young brother Tommy, who loves making monster masks. Rob, a hiker, is hunting Jason to avenge his sister, one of Jason's earlier victims. Jason kills the young people next door one by one while they party, and then turns on the Jarvises. Rob is killed, and Trish and Tommy are left fighting for their lives.
How Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter ends
Tommy shaves his head to look like Jason as a boy, which confuses Jason long enough for Trish to hit him with his machete. Tommy finishes him, hacking him with the machete again and again. In hospital, Tommy hugs his sister, and his look suggests he has been changed by it. The Tommy Jarvis story continues in A New Beginning.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 05 · 1985 · Film
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning recap
Years after killing Jason, Tommy Jarvis, now a troubled teenager haunted by nightmares, is sent to Pinehurst, a halfway house for disturbed youths near Crystal Lake, run by Dr. Matt Letter and his assistant Pam. A patient named Vic murders another boy, Joey, with an axe. Soon after, a killer in a hockey mask begins murdering the halfway house residents, locals and passers-by. Sheriff Tucker insists Jason is dead and buried. Tommy, who is violent and silent, falls under suspicion as the deaths mount. Pam and Reggie, a boy at the house, are chased by the killer through a storm.
How Friday the 13th: A New Beginning ends
The killer falls from a barn loft onto a harrow and dies. Unmasked, he is Roy Burns, a paramedic and Joey's father, copying Jason as revenge. In hospital, Tommy has a vision of Jason, then turns up behind Pam in a hockey mask with a knife, suggesting he has become the new killer. Part VI ignores this and brings Jason back.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 06 · 1986 · Film
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives recap
Tommy Jarvis, released from a mental institution, goes with a friend to dig up Jason's body and cremate it. Lightning strikes a metal fence post that Tommy plunged into the body, and Jason is revived. He kills Tommy's friend and returns to the area. Crystal Lake has been renamed Forest Green to escape its past, and Sheriff Garris thinks Tommy is the killer and locks him up. The sheriff's daughter Megan, a counsellor at the reopened camp, believes Tommy. Jason kills his way back to the camp, which is now full of children.
How Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives ends
Tommy lures Jason into the lake and chains him to a boulder at the bottom. Jason grabs Tommy and nearly drowns him, but Megan hits Jason with a boat propeller and saves him. The sheriff has been killed. Jason is left chained underwater, and the final shot shows his eye opening.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 07 · 1988 · Film
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood recap
Tina Shepard has telekinetic powers. As a child, she accidentally killed her abusive father by making the dock collapse under him into Crystal Lake. Years later, her mother and her psychiatrist, Dr. Crews, bring her back to the lake house, supposedly for treatment, but Crews wants to exploit her powers. Trying to bring her father back from the lake, Tina instead frees Jason from his chains. Jason kills a group of teenagers holding a party at the house next door. Tina's visions warn of the murders, and she befriends Nick, one of the partygoers. Crews leaves Tina's mother to die, hoping to make Tina's powers grow.
How Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood ends
Tina fights Jason with her powers, dropping objects on him, burning the house and splitting his mask. At the dock, she summons her father's body from the lake, which drags Jason down. Tina and Nick survive, and the next morning Jason's mask is found in the lake.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 08 · 1989 · Film
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan recap
A boat's anchor cuts an underwater power cable and the electric shock revives Jason. He boards the SS Lazarus, a ship taking a graduating class from Lakeview High to New York City, with the strict teacher Charles McCulloch and the kind teacher Colleen. Charles's niece Rennie is afraid of water and has visions of a drowning boy. Jason kills students and crew across the ship, and the survivors, Rennie, her boyfriend Sean, Charles and Colleen, escape on a lifeboat as it sinks. They reach Manhattan, but Jason follows them through the city streets, alleys and subway, where gang members kidnap Rennie. Colleen is killed in a police car explosion, and Rennie learns Charles pushed her into Crystal Lake as a child. Jason drowns Charles in a barrel of toxic waste.
How Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan ends
Jason chases Rennie and Sean into the sewers, where the tunnels flood with toxic waste every night. Rennie throws a vat of it into his face, and the flood washes him away, turning him into a child as he melts. Rennie's fear is gone, and she and Sean walk out into Times Square.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 09 · 1993 · Film
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday recap
The FBI lures Jason into a trap at Crystal Lake and blows him to pieces. At the morgue, a coroner is compelled to eat Jason's still-beating heart, and Jason's spirit takes over his body. Jason begins passing from body to body, killing as he goes. The bounty hunter Creighton Duke knows the secret: Jason can only be reborn through a blood relative, and only a relative can kill him for good, with a special dagger. His remaining family are his half-sister Diana, her daughter Jessica, and Jessica's baby Stephanie. Diana is killed, and Jessica's estranged partner Steven is blamed. Steven tries to protect Jessica and the baby as Jason, in a series of bodies, hunts them.
How Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday ends
Jason is reborn from Diana's body in his old form, and Duke dies holding him off. Jessica stabs Jason with the dagger, and hands from hell drag him underground. As Jessica, Steven and the baby walk away, Freddy Krueger's gloved hand bursts from the ground and pulls Jason's mask down, setting up Freddy vs. Jason.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 10 · 2001 · Film · optional
Jason X recap
In 2010, the government holds Jason at a research facility. When they fail to kill him, the scientist Rowan LaFontaine tries to freeze him; Jason breaks free, ruptures the cryogenic pod, and both of them end up frozen. In 2455, a university class on a field trip to the ruined Earth finds the frozen pair and takes them aboard their ship, the Grendel. Rowan is revived. Jason wakes up in the morgue and begins killing the students, soldiers and crew. The professor wants to sell Jason's body. The android KM-14 is upgraded and blows Jason apart, but the ship's medical station rebuilds him as a cyborg, Uber Jason. The crew distracts him with a holographic recreation of Crystal Lake.
How Jason X ends
The survivors escape, but Jason catches up. Sergeant Brodski, in a spacesuit, grabs Jason and drags him into the atmosphere of Earth Two, where they both burn up. On the planet, two teenagers see a shooting star fall into a lake, and Jason's burned mask sinks to the bottom.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 11 · 2003 · Film
Freddy vs. Jason recap
Freddy Krueger, the dream killer, is powerless because Springwood has made the town's teenagers forget him, using a drug called Hypnocil to suppress their dreams. To make the town afraid again, he takes the form of Pamela Voorhees in Jason's dreams and sends Jason to Springwood. Jason kills a teenager at Lori Campbell's house, and the town starts to fear Freddy again. Lori and her old boyfriend Will, who escaped from the asylum where Hypnocil was given to him, piece it together. But Jason keeps killing the teenagers Freddy wants for himself, and Freddy turns on him. Lori and her friends plan to drag Freddy out of dreams and into the real world at Crystal Lake, where Jason can fight him.
How Freddy vs. Jason ends
Lori pulls Freddy into the real world at Crystal Lake, and Freddy and Jason fight across the docks. Jason tears Freddy's arm off, Freddy stabs Jason, and Lori beheads Freddy with Jason's machete. Jason sinks into the lake. The next morning, Jason rises from the water holding Freddy's head, which winks.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 12 · 2009 · Film
Friday the 13th recap
In 1980, young Jason Voorhees watches his mother Pamela beheaded by a counsellor at Camp Crystal Lake. Years later, a group of friends looking for a marijuana crop near the lake is killed by Jason, except Whitney Miller, whom he keeps alive in his underground tunnels because she looks like his mother. Six weeks later, her brother Clay comes searching for her while a group of college friends stays at a cabin on the lake. Clay teams up with Jenna, one of the group. Jason, wearing a hockey mask he finds, kills the friends one by one and a police officer.
How Friday the 13th ends
Clay finds Whitney chained in Jason's tunnels, and Jason kills Jenna as they flee. In a barn, Whitney pretends to be his mother, and they chain Jason and stab him with his machete. They dump his body in the lake, and Jason bursts through the dock and grabs Whitney.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
Common questions
What is the Friday the 13th story so far?
Jason Voorhees drowned as a boy at Camp Crystal Lake in 1957, and his mother Pamela kills the counsellors she blames, until she is beheaded in 1980. Jason takes over, putting on his hockey mask and dying and returning again and again, through Tommy Jarvis, a telekinetic teen, a boat to Manhattan, body-hopping, a fight with Freddy Krueger and a trip to the year 2455. A 2009 remake starts the story over in its own continuity.
Where did Friday the 13th leave off?
Friday the 13th (2009) is the latest. Clay finds Whitney chained in Jason's tunnels, and Jason kills Jenna as they flee. In a barn, Whitney pretends to be his mother, and they chain Jason and stab him with his machete. They dump his body in the lake, and Jason bursts through the dock and grabs Whitney.
Keep reading
Watch order guideHow to watch the Friday the 13th movies in order12 titles · 18 hours
Skip guideWhat can you skip in Game of Thrones?2 titles you can skip
RecapChainsaw Man recap: the story so far2 titles recapped
Watch order guideHow to watch the One Piece movies in order8 titles · 498 hours
Skip guideWhich Star Wars movies can you skip?5 titles you can skip
Watch order guideHow to watch the Star Trek movies in order26 titles · 735 hours