May 2025 marks the 45th anniversary of the original Friday the 13th, so now is the best time to take a stroll through the 12-film franchise it birthed. Well maybe not the best time, but I don’t want to wait five years, so we’re ranking every version of Jason Voorhees now, dammit.
The iconic slasher killer has taken many forms over the years, and I’m not just talking about the different performers who played him (who I have mostly credited below, though there are cases where other stunt performers/costume designers/etc. filled in for certain moments that I’m not going to go through with a fine-toothed comb). Jason’s look, behavior, and even the way he operates changes drastically throughout the franchise, even between consecutive films that are directly linked, which is why there is so much meat on the bone here. Without any further ado, let’s dive in.
Every Jason from the Friday the 13th Franchise Ranked
#12 Reboot Jason (Derek Mears, Friday the 13th 2009)
No shade to Mears’ performance. He is delivering a powerful and credible threat here. But there’s something about the warren of tunnels, the kidnapping, and the turning on klieg lights (that I highly doubt were there back when Camp Crystal Lake was operational) to hunt down victims that just isn’t “my” Jason. I prefer a hulking avatar of death rather than the backwoods survivalist mode that he’s got going on here.
#11 Roy (Dick Wieand unmasked & Tom Morga masked, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)
I love the snazzy powder blue accents he’s rocking here. And frankly, I don’t care who’s behind the hockey mask as long as he’s murderizing people good and proper, but Roy is simply not Jason, so it would be a crime to rank him any higher than this.
#10 Imaginary Jason (Tom Morga, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning)
I guess it’s nice that there is a proper Jason Voorhees floating around in the “copycat killer” movie, but outside of the Corey Feldman prologue, the imaginary Jason mostly just stands around like Michael Myers and watches Tommy Jarvis change. Like, I know Tommy’s jacked now, so I sort of get it, but it’s just not a very interesting thing for Jason to be up to.
#9 Zombie Boy Jason (Ari Lehman, Friday the 13th 1980)
Sure, he provides a potent jump scare that is probably the only reason (other than Tom Savini’s effects) that the movie became such a word-of-mouth smash hit. But his presence at the end of the original Friday the 13th absolutely ruins any hope that the character will ever have a comprehensible continuity, right from the beginning. And this is nobody’s fault! They didn’t know they’d have to make 11 more of these. They just wanted one final shock in the movie, and they were right to want that! But Jason transmogrifying from a dead child to a living adult in Part 2 has plagued continuity-heads for 44 years, and it’s hard for that not to rankle just a little bit.
#8 Jason vs. Freddy (Ken Kirzinger, Freddy vs. Jason)
He has some great kills here (the bed! the rave!), but Jason Voorhees is very much second banana when it comes to his position in the overall narrative. I suppose that’s what you get when the other guy talks and you don’t, but that’s not very fair, is it?
#7 Uber Jason (Kane Hodder, Jason X)
Uber Jason is better in theory than in execution. It’s a fun way to engage fully with the sci-fi premise that they’ve thrown their killer into for basically no reason (New Line really spun out the second they got their hands on the property, didn’t they?). But the design is bad and he just looks plasticky and cheap, not actually menacing or properly enhanced.
#6 Demon Worm Jason (Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday)
Speaking of New Line spinning out… Jason Voorhees primarily manifests in this movie as a body-hopping demon worm. Why is this ranked so high? It’s nonsense, but at least it’s fun nonsense. Plus, I wouldn’t trade the “Jason shaves a cop, transfers the demon worm, and then his previous body melts” sequence for the world. It’s uncomfortable, ooey gooey gross, and just plain weird, which are things I prize in my horror movies.
#5 Funny Jason (C.J. Graham & Dan Bradley, Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI)
Beyond the James Bond parody at the beginning of Jason Lives, most of the funny bits in the most purposefully comic installment happen around Jason. I think that’s for the best, in order to maintain him as a credible threat. But he does get a little lost in the sauce here, especially with a Tommy Jarvis and a proper final girl jockeying for screen time elsewhere.
#4 “Final” Jason (Ted White, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter)
This is a real meat-and-potatoes Jason, but he delivers some of the gnarliest kills in the franchise with aplomb.
#3 3-D Jason (Richard Brooker, Friday the 13th Part III)
I don’t like the sexual assault overtones of this Jason, but come on. This is the installment where he embraces his hockey masked self, and that’s simply iconic. Plus, Brooker is acting the hell out of this role, delivering a physical, menacing Jason that has a wiry wiliness that is very different from the raw strength delivered by other performers who I might mention…
#2 Recurring Jason (Kane Hodder, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, bits and pieces of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, the first two-thirds of Jason X)
And oh look, here comes one of those performers now! Kane Hodder’s Jason is a longtime favorite, and for good reason. His Jason is hulking, menacing, and cuts through crowds of nubile young people like a hot knife through butter. However, it’s a damn shame that he showed up right when the franchise was going off the rails, because beyond the telekinetic battle at the end of The New Blood, he only gets a few proper showcase moments scattered throughout his quadrilogy.
He genuinely looks great in his first two movies, though. The rotting zombie face of New Blood and the slimy river rat look of Jason Takes Manhattan are the masked and unmasked versions of Jason that I probably picture the most.
#1 Baghead Jason (Steve Daskewisz masked & Warrington Gillette unmasked, Friday the 13th Part 2)
Betcha didn’t expect to find him here, did you? Now, look. I love the hockey mask. More than the bag. But Steve Dash is acting the hell out of this version of Jason, setting the template for what the adult version of this character could be, now that he has been released from his zombie child shell. Somehow. This makes him a perfect foil for Ginny, who is the best-acted and most effective final girl from the franchise and deserves a worthy opponent.