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Friday the 13th’s Pamela Voorhees Prequel Could Save The Franchise
Jason Lives director Tom McLoughlin's Pamela Voorhees-centric prequel is the best way forward for the future of the Friday the 13th franchise.

Friday the 13th’s Pamela Voorhees Prequel Could Save The Franchise

The Friday the 13th franchise could be saved by The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees, a prequel Jason Lives! helmer Tom McLoughlin has already written. The prospect of adding a prequel to a well-loved horror franchise is always a tricky one. In many cases, like director Rob Zombie’s contentious Halloween remake, prequels can unintentionally sap beloved villains of their scare factors by over-explaining their origins, providing didactic reasons for their once enigmatic evil, and sapping them of any mystique.

However, in the case of rival franchises like Nightmare On Elm Street, a prequel could be just what is needed to save the dormant series. Unlike Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger is a very vocal character with a well-known backstory that could be fleshed out further. A character like Robert Englund’s iconic dream demon could benefit from a prequel that makes him more rounded and sympathetic, whereas the same approach could ruin Michael Myers.

In between these two extremes lies Jason Voorhees. The hockey-masked villain of the Friday the 13th franchise has never starred in a prequel movie that explains his origins. Still, he does have a compelling backstory that justifies his murderous urges (unlike Michael Myers). The lesser Friday the 13th sequels took Jason to space, to a showdown with Freddy, and back to the past for a remake, but even this 2009 re-imagining of the series didn’t dwell on the character’s origin story. However, Jason Lives! director Tom McLoughlin recently revealed that he and James Sweet have written a prequel to the franchise that centers on Jason’s iconic mother, Pamela Voorhees. This project could prove perfect as a vehicle to reboot the ailing series. The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees, a psychological horror prequel to the Friday the 13th franchise, outlines Pamela’s years between Jason’s drowning and the original 1980 movie, and turning the script into a movie would be the best route forward for the franchise for numerous reasons.

The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees Explained

From his iconic hockey mask and machete combination to his memorably inventive kills, Jason is one of the most iconic slasher villains of all time. As such, some fans may balk at the idea of a Friday the 13th reboot without Jason. However, as Scream fans know, Pamela Voorhees was already the villain of the original movie. Jason didn’t appear until a momentary jump scare near the movie’s close and didn’t become the franchise’s antagonist until the sequel, with the character only gaining his trademark mask in the third movie.

Since then, Jason transitioned from being a super-strong brute to some form of supernatural being, with the character being classified as a revenant, a demon, and various other paranormal phenomena in the increasingly silly sequels. McLoughlin, however, proposed a prequel that would undo this slow slide into fantasy territory in favor of a completely realistic and chilling depiction of what made Jason into a monster.

Why The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees Would Work

After Jason’s apparent death by drowning but before Pamela’s death in 1980’s original Friday the 13th, The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees would be a more grounded sort of horror than the slasher franchise is known for. Per McLoughlin (via Bloody Disgusting):

Pamela’s diary allows us deeper insight into how she feels. It’s particularly even more unsettling as we hear her psychopathic and sociopathic thoughts and plans. I wanted to approach this as if this was a true story. Every event and character are believable. No supernatural aspects. As extreme as her murders are they are passion kills.”

McLoughlin has been something of an authority on the franchise since Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is one of the only critically acclaimed sequels in the series. The Scream franchise’s horror cliche parodies were influenced by the streak of self-aware humor that the sixth movie gave the slasher series. There is good reason to think McLoughlin’s plan to reinvent Jason once again by making him more human than ever before could prove similarly successful.

Why A Pamela Voorhees Prequel Would Save Friday the 13th

The primary appeal of The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees lies in the fact that Jason hasn’t been authentically scary for decades. The later sequels leaned into this, giving the character progressively goofier powers and more absurd kills to make the Friday the 13th franchise work as an over-the-top self-aware slasher comedy. However, a psychological horror reboot of the series that doesn’t center on the iconic character could make the Friday the 13th franchise feel relatively realistic for the first time scene in its early sequels, salvaging Jason from the corny horror villain stable.

Much like a successful Nightmare On Elm Street reboot would need to banish memories of Super-Freddy, Freddy’s misguided rap album, and other comedic excesses from the minds of the public, a Friday the 13th franchise reboot that makes Jason scary again would need to go way back to the killer’s childhood and depict his slow indoctrination into his mother’s world of supposedly “justifiable” bloodlust.

The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees Humanizes Jason

While part of Jason’s appeal has always been his wordless evil, the character is not the same as Halloween‘s Michael Myers. Viewers know exactly what started Jason’s murderous rampage and exactly what emotions underly his killing, meaning that humanizing the villain with a backstory would add a layer of pathos to the familiar franchise plot. While some horror prequels, like It’s spinoff Welcome To Derry, are limited in how much they can make cosmic entities more relatable and sympathetic, the Friday the 13th franchise has a villain who perfectly balances tragic innocence and brutish killer instinct. McLoughlin is clearly aware of this, stating:

“…there’s also a deeply disturbing and creepy aspect seeing the child Jason watching, maybe learning from his mothers’ savage murders. Blood splattered; Mrs. Voorhees embraces her son with a genuine mother’s warmth. Gently explaining to him why these wicked people need to die. ‘If we don’t kill them, Jason, they’ll keep hurting more people like us. There’s no God who will punish them. Only us, Jason’.”

How The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees Changes Friday the 13th

Throughout the Friday the 13th series, Jason refusing to kill children has always implied that his murders were guided by an unhinged sense of morality. However, this changes his character completely. Jason would no longer be a thoughtless killing machine and would instead be a murderous zealot, a change that would have implications for both the victims he chooses and how he would kill them. Thus far, the Friday the 13th franchise never explicitly addressed criticisms about Jason only killing teenagers who have had sex, taken drugs, or otherwise acted in a way that moral guardians might object to.

However, this new characterization would allow the series to finally justify and explore Jason’s twisted ideas of right and wrong and where they came from. This would also make a potential Freddy Vs. Jason 2 much more interesting since a “morally” motivated Jason would presumably be even less willing to work with the sadistic predator than his child-like earlier incarnation was in Freddy Vs. Jason. Thus, filling in the backstory of Pamela Voorhees could essentially reinvent the Friday the 13th villain and, by extension, the franchise, making The Secret Diary Of Pamela Voorhees the best prequel for the series going forward.