The Only Four Friday The 13th Movies That Take Place On The Correct Date

Director/producer Sean S. Cunningham has admitted that his 1980 slasher film "Friday the 13th" was a deliberate effort to imitate the style and success of John Carpenter's "Halloween," which had come out only two years prior. Cunningham tried to copt Carpenter's "killer's eye perspective" camera angles, and it's no coincidence that both films take place on dates famous for horror, bad luck, and death. Cunningham's gambit was successful, though, and his $550,000 movie ended up making nearly $60 million at the box office. It also spawned 11 sequels, many of which came to define the horror trends of the '80s. Although none of the "Friday the 13th" movies are particularly beloved by critics, they are a gestalt-defining phenomenon.

Holiday-themed horror films began popping up regularly in theaters. The years after "Friday the 13th" saw the release of "April Fool's Day," "New Year's Evil," "Prom Night," and "Silent Night, Deadly Night."

But while all the "Halloween" movies take place on October 31st, and "April Fool's Day" take place on April 1st, only four of the original "Friday the 13th" movies definitely take place on a Friday the 13th. The 1980 original does, of course, but even then, the film messed up its own date. An on-screen chyron reads that it takes place on Friday, June 13th, 1979. The problem: in 1979, June 13th was a Wednesday. The only Fridays that fell on the 13th in 1979 were in April and July.

Careful "Friday the 13th" fans have combed through all 12 entries in the franchise and found that apart from the first, only three sequels actually take place on a Friday the 13th.

The Gregorian calendar is arranged such that one or two Fridays fall on the 13th every year. It's pretty common. Indeed, Friday, December 13th, 2024 is the second Friday the 13th this year (there was also a Friday the 13th back in September). Fans of Jason Voorhees have many excuses to celebrate with movie marathons.

For those unfamiliar with the "Friday the 13th" franchise, its films mostly follow a killer named Jason Voorhees who was left to drown at New Jersey's Camp Crystal Lake while his counselors were busy copulating. In the first film, Jason had been dead for years, and his mother, Pamela, was killing camp counselors as revenge. In the sequels, it was revealed Jason was still alive and had grown into an outsize, homicidal oaf living in New Jersey's woods. In the third movie, Jason dons a Detroit Red Wings hockey mask, and he continued to wear the mask in the sequels that followed. Through various electric and/or magical means, Jason manages to stay alive despite many fatal injuries, essentially becoming an unkillable zombie. His bloodlust is never sated.

Friday the 13th was significant in the 1980 original, as it was the date — in June 1958 — that Jason originally died. Jason was also born on June 13, 1946, but that day was a Thursday.

While Pamela Voorhees' original killings were said to take place on the imaginary Friday the 13th in July 1979, Marcus Nispel's 2009 "Friday the 13th" reboot tried to correct things. In that film, the events of Cunningham's original movie were time-shifted forward to June 1980, when the year's only Friday the 13th actually took place. That was fixed. The remake, however (in what might be an homage to the original), also botched its own dates. The reboot takes place in June 2009 ... which had no Friday the 13th. 2009 only had Fridays falling on the 13th in February, March, and November. Oops.

But while the dates are technically wrong, the first film and the reboot are said to take place on Friday the 13th. They technically count.

Note that the "Friday the 13th" movies mostly all take place at Camp Crystal Lake in New Jersey, usually around the summertime. As such, most of the "Friday the 13th" movies take place in June, July, or August.

Some fans have backward-engineered the events of "Friday the 13th Part 2" (1981) to take place on Friday the 13th ... in June of 1984, when there actually was a Friday the 13th. There are, however, no on-screen chyrons indicating that "Friday 2" takes place three years in the future, and the on-screen fashions definitely point to it being set in 1981. That means, technically, the second film doesn't take place on Friday the 13th.

But even if it did, the immediate sequels, "Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D" (1982) and "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter" (1984) wouldn't. Those two films seem to follow the events of "Friday the 13th Part 2" directly, meaning audiences would be witnessing the events of Sunday, July 15th through Wednesday, July 18th, 1984. It's frustrating that none of the characters allude to the actual date in any of these films. It kind of defeats the purpose of the title.

The fifth film, "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning" (1985), is said to take place five years after "Final Chapter," putting it square in 1989. There was a Friday the 13th in October of 1989, but there's nothing on-screen to say that "A New Beginning" is set in October.

If we're to extrapolate the five-year time-jump, though, then the sixth film "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives" (1986) takes place in July 1990 ... which, finally, had a Friday the 13th. The seventh film, "Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood," by that same timeline, jumps ahead to the teen years of a character named Tina, implying that seven years had passed since "Jason Lives." That means it's set in July of 1997 — which also had a Friday the 13th.

Of course, holding to that timeline would have to push the events of "Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Take Manhattan" (1989) to the year 1998, and the events of "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday" (1993) to 2003. And by now, things are getting farfetched.