Day 10: Friday the 13th

Day 10 of Calloween Movie Month


Content warnings: blood/gore, underaged sex drinking and drug use, real animal death, child death, misogyny

Recommended?: Yes

Spoilers and discussion of mentioned topics below. You have been warned.

Traditionalism is a killer.



Friday the 13th follows a group of camp counselors rebuilding a summer camp that's been the site of multiple killings and tragic accidents in the years since it's initial opening.

It's pretty simple plot-wise, but it uses that simplicity to great effect.

I love the long shots on the characters in fear, allowing their fear to seep into your bones while not even knowing what they're scared of. The prosthetics and gross fake blood also help a lot in creating a generally gross and upsetting atmosphere.

It's hard for me personally to talk about the way things are scary, it's kind of like talking about how things are funny. I want to talk about a strong throughline I noticed. That being that the upholding of tradition will hurt those who lay outside of it.

There's the obvious, in that their need to keep this stupid camp around keeps getting people killed. But in manifests in a lot of more subtle ways too.

I want to talk about sex and drug use in the film.

It's a trope in a lot of horror, but especially slashers, that anyone who has or is interested in sex or drugs will inevitably die. Which will innately reward the usually pure and virginal final girl. That isn't the case here, though.

All of the campers, including Alice Hardy, our final girl, are eager participants of all of the above. Alice is particularly happy to throw back a couple beers and play some stripping games with her friends.

She has no virginal status, so it doesn't somehow give her an upper hand.

The killer, Pamela Vorhees, is an older woman who blames the death of her son on teenagers having sex. She tries to take a useless sort of revenge on what she sees as the symbols of what killed her son. A deranged old woman talking about how evil sexuality is and how it killed her child, where have we heard that one before?

Alice attempts to kill her with a frying pan, a symbol of the idea of a perfect traditional woman, reclaiming that symbol to give her strength. But it doesn't work, because it can't keep either of these women down anymore. She takes on her own strength outside of the ideal woman she's expected to mold herself into to kill the living symbol of patriarchal femininity, and Pamela's obsession with it is her downfall.

The puritanical, patriarchal obsession with how young people should behave and what should they do with their bodies is literally deadly. The idea of a summer camp where they sit around singing bible songs all day is a death sentence for these teens blossoming into their bodies, lives, and sexualities. And I for one, wholeheartedly agree.