Feeding the Fear: Friday fan films writing new chapters
Some are unwatchable, some are sublime, but Friday the 13th fan films continue to pay homage to the King of Kills, Jason Voorhees.
Alex Slasher
3 min read
If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, the creators of the methodically deadly Jason Voorhees can sit warm and comfortable next to the Crystal Lake campfires in their minds’ eye knowing the fear and carnage they penned seeded the fertile fields of creativity for generations. That’s a lofty sentence to describe what started as a not so lofty concept. Long before the term “fan film” entered into the zeitgeist of horror fandom, kids and “kids” were reenacting and reinventing the twisted tales they’d seen on screens big and small to tell their own tales of the drowned boy turned silent slayer along the shores of Camp Crystal Lake. At some point, probably not long after Jason donned his iconic hockey mask in 1983 if I had to take a guess, some of those play actors became actual actors when one of them thought to hit “record.”
At some point in the late 90s as the Internet was in its infancy, maybe toddling a bit but far from taking full steps into the outstretched arms of what would become both their parents and their children, short movies made by unknowns but depicting the famous and infamous began popping up on 4:3 monitors around the world. At this point, they were mostly shared from person to person. The advent of file sharing sped that along, but it would be Youtube that formed the playground on which budding filmmakers would begin extending the universes we’d only ventured into with the purchase of tickets and renting of tapes. Soon thereafter the fan film was born.
Like the Internet, fan films would take some time to get on their collective feet. Most were shaky, disjointed, thinking out loud sort of productions. In fact, few could be called “productions”…particularly where Friday the 13th fan films were concerned. Many a class library session or late night study session was spent scouring Youtube for new Friday fan films as opposed to what should have been spent library-ing and studying, and many were the disappointments when I’d find one and click “play.” It didn’t matter though. The universe in which I loved to inhabit - one generally filled with a tree lined campground, soon to be screaming camp counselors and of course the MacGyver of mass murder – was growing. New chapters being added long after “The Final Chapter.”
Jump to 2022 and Friday the 13th fan films abound. I still have to scour for new ones since I’ve seen pretty much everything available, but new ones pop up a lot more often than they did back in those college library Internet searches. Somehow I finished college…and more and more amateur, even professional, directors finished their take on the Crystal Lake killer. Many of the films remain of the make-it-up-as-we-go-along ilk, while others present as well-polished welcome additions for Friday fans always hopeful a reconciled handshake or a judge’s gavel might deliver the next fear laden entry to disturb the placid waters of the cabin adjacent lake so many of us have come to know and adore.
This is not meant to serve as a definitive or all encompassing list of Friday fan films. Sure, I’ve seen most of them, but it’s far from uncommon to find myself 20 minutes into one of these flicks before I come to the realization that I’ve already watched it…twice. I usually keep watching anyway. As different as they all are, some good – some downright awful, they all have one thing in common: They were made by fans for fans, and that’s pretty cool. So, without further wordiness, I begin the list. No reviews, links if available, some in production (consider supporting if you’ve got an extra buck or two) and to be added to as more make their way across my laptop screen. Enjoy…Only films 20 minutes or longer made the list and I've omitted, “A Friday the 13th Fan Film” from the titles that have them to save me some typing. There are a lot of those.