Misc
Everything You Need to Know About Jason Voorhees
Though Summer has ended, the things we did over the summer will never leave us. The cookouts, the drinks by the fire, that masked guy who put an axe in our friend’s spine. Have you ever wondered why that happened? Well, today’s article is for you. We’ll be going through the history of one of horror cinema’s most famous slashers, Jason Voorhees, explaining how he does it, what makes him tick, and perhaps even answering what’s going on in that lumpy giant brain behind the hockey mask.
Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.
The usual rules apply for this type of article: I will not be taking into consideration any comics, books, or television shows. We’re strictly doing the official films, beginning with Friday the 13th (1980) and ending chronologically with Jason X.
We’ll also consider the 2009 reboot for one crucial detail.
So, let’s make like a machete and cut right to it.
WHO IS JASON VOORHEES?
It all begins with Camp Crystal Lake, a campground (in New Jersey!) owned by the Christy family. Born to Pamela Voorhees, the cook at Camp Crystal Lake, Jason was born disabled, which led to being bullied as a child. Often mocked and teased by younger campgoers and ignored by irresponsible camp counselors, Jason lived a short and miserable “first” life.
While swimming in Crystal Lake in 1957, the counselors left Jason alone and surrounded by cruel children who chased him down and threw him off the dock. A panicked Jason drowned, which caused the camp to be closed temporarily when his body was never recovered.
Unbeknownst to Pamela and the rest of the world, Jason survived drowning and wandered the woods surrounding Crystal Lake until adulthood, surviving in an old shack. Pamela was nonetheless struck with grief and became bitter and resentful, murdering two of Camp Crystal Lake’s counselors in 1958. She would go on to set several fires and sabotage the camp’s many reopenings, leaving the Christy family destitute.
In 1980, the eldest son of the Christy family, Steve, attempted to reopen the camp and ended up drawing the ire of Pamela, who began murdering to tarnish the camp once more. Her spree ended when she was killed in self-defense by camp counselor Alice Hardy. Jason would recover her remains and create a shrine for his mother’s head, soon mirroring her habits as he became full of rage and resentment.
Taking up a machete as his weapon of choice, and later donning his iconic hockey mask in Friday the 13th Part III, Jason Voorhees became a menacing killer, whose legacy would span decades and even extend outside of the camp to places like Manhattan, and eventually the stars themselves.
WHY DOES JASON VOORHEES KILL?
The two most prominent reasons for Jason’s bloodlust are to seek vengeance for drowning and to get revenge for his mother’s murder. In the 2009 reboot, we see it explicitly. Still, it’s only implied a grown Jason saw Alice killing his mother and started targeting teens because of it.
While it’s lampshaded that Jason hates drug use and premarital sex in a couple of films in some very funny ways, that was really Pamela’s gripe about the counselors. I think it’s safe to say those concepts are probably lost on him, given that he’s not very smart.
Respectfully, of course.
HOW DOES JASON VOORHEES DIE?
After years and dozens of kills, Jason Voorhees had become the stuff of nightmares. But he was still human, and after suffering wounds throughout the first 3 films, was eventually weak enough to be killed during the events of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, where his skull was cleaved with his own machete.
The person who took him out was Tommy Jarvis, a young boy, and special effects hobbyist living at Crystal Lake. His traumatic experience with the killer and legends of his uncanny survival made him believe Jason would return. This fear was only exacerbated when Roy Burns took up Jason’s mantle and terrorized a teenage Tommy at Pinehurst Halfway House.
WHO IS ROY BURNS?
He’s the replacement “Jason” after Tommy Jarvis killed Voorhees the first time. He was a paramedic who went mad when his son, Joey, was murdered by a disgruntled member of Pinehurst. He got thrown on a wall of spikes and died.
I like Roy, but he’s not the focus of this article, so let’s move on!
HOW DOES JASON VOORHEES KEEP RETURNING FROM THE DEAD?
After Tommy Jarvis’ encounter with Roy Burns, he becomes especially paranoid and goes to dig up his nemesis during a thunderstorm, intending to destroy his body. In the process, Jason’s corpse is struck by lightning, and he inexplicably returns from the dead. This raises many questions, and the Friday films have spent a lot of time explaining why that happened.
Throughout the series, it’s stated that Jason has an unrivaled regenerative capability. In Jason X, it’s shown that the U.S. government was keeping him in cryostasis specifically to study that ability. The rules are vague, but we can make a few assumptions about how this ability works.
Jason Voorhees can take just about any amount of physical punishment as long as his body is still mostly intact. For instance, the ending of Jason Takes Manhattan shows him being dissolved in a flood of toxic waste and drowned, but he still keeps going. If his body is blown apart or significantly dismembered though, as seen in Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X, he can’t return without assistance. In Jason X, a swarm of nanites accelerates his natural healing and turns him into Uber Jason.
In Jason Goes to Hell, we see he has one last trick up his sleeve to evade death: transferring his spirit into another person. In the film, Jason is described as an entity that wears bodies like suits; this degrades anyone he possesses, filling them with disease and slowly melting them from the inside out. From there, he can return to his complete form by possessing another Voorhees blood relative, which allows him to regain his hulking zombie body.
And his mask… For some reason?
SO…IS JASON VOORHEES A DEMON THEN?
There are two schools of thought on this question:
1. Jason Voorhees himself is a demon who can naturally regenerate his body, or
2. The Voorhees bloodline is cursed, and that forces Jason to keep coming back.
In Jason Goes to Hell, Professional Jason hunter Creighton Duke says Jason is something humankind has never seen before but doesn’t actually explain what he is, or why only Voorhees blood relatives can take him out. A scrapped effect for the film showed Jason in a much more demonic form, implying it’s the former, but this never actually made it to the screen.
Some people say he may be a demon of another kind. Jason being a deadite is an idea popularized by director Adam Marcus for the film Jason Goes to Hell. It’s still only a fan theory with very little backing outside the props Marcus borrowed for the film.
Jason doesn’t explicitly enjoy causing suffering; instead, he seems to do it mostly out of sheer rage. His eyes aren’t white, he never verbally mocks his victims, no one ever calls him a deadite, and they never call the weapon that destroys him a Kandarian dagger. Most importantly, the Necronomicon is never read in any of the movies to summon his spirit. He just gets struck by lightning and comes back.
So regardless of whether he’s a demon or not, he most definitely isn’t a deadite.
HOW DOES JASON VOORHEES MOVE SO FAST?
Among Jason’s abilities, post-resurrection are superhuman strength, durability, and speed. Most instances of Jason “teleporting” result from his victims getting disoriented (as they’re often running through a forest and may or may not be intoxicated). This, combined with Jason’s athletic ability and bad film editing, creates the illusion of teleportation.
In the case of Jason Takes Manhattan, it’s a lot of bad editing.
CAN ANYTHING ACTUALLY KILL JASON VOORHEES?
The answer is yes, but also, no! Satisfying, I know.
Creighton Duke says there’s only one real way for Jason to be destroyed: “Through a Voorhees was he born, through a Voorhees may he be reborn. And only by the hands of a Voorhees will he die”.
This is true in the short term, as he is killed by his niece, Jessica Kimble, using a…mystical Voorhees dagger that she stakes his heart with. Eventually, Jason would be freed by Freddy Krueger, using the last traces of power he had to pull the Voorhees out of hell in Freddy vs. Jason.
Meaning there is no surefire way to put him down permanently.
And as a fan of the Friday the 13th films, that’s quite alright by me. I prefer my nonsensical super-zombies erring on the side of completely unkillable. The only hell Jason Voorhees has to worry about now is the legal hell his film and character rights are in. And with the new Crystal Lake series still in development, it’s anybody’s guess as to when we will see our soggy rotten boy again.
…SO YOU’RE SURE JASON ISN’T A DEADITE?
Oh my god, no. Stop trying to make deadite Jason happen. It’s not going to happen.
***
And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between!
Misc
Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!
Enter Our Halloween Giveaway!
How to Enter:
Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK AND JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP!
Step 2. LIKE AND SHARE the giveaway post!
Step 3. This is the most important step, email us at contact@horrorpress.com with your FULL Facebook name (so we can verify you’re in the group) and who your favorite character is from the Texas Chainsaw franchise.
**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**
**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**
What You’ll Win
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video
- 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
- Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
- Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
- Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
- Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
- The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
- Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
- Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
- Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
- Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
- Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
- Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
- Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
- Behind-the-scenes featurette
- Cast and crew interviews
- Theatrical trailers and TV spots
- Concept art galleries
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
Misc
NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!
As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever.
From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025!
Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights
Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength
Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons.
During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear.
I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!
You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.
Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet
Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.
I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film.
Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band
My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to.
“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”
“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.”
That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)
Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy.
Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business
If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.
“Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.”
In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.
Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”
Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.
Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment
Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make.
Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house…
Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature!

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.
Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun
NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long.
At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.
I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life.
That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more.





