Having churned out nine sequels and a crossover in the space of just 23 years, it was inevitable that the next port of call for Friday the 13th would be a remake, seeing as virtually every viable horror property in existence had been resurrected at least once since 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reignited the boom for bloodstained reinventions.
What did come as a surprise, though, was that Marcus Nispel’s take on the Jason Voorhees mythos still remains the last time we saw the hockey mask-wearing murderer on the big screen, with 14 years having passed since Camp Crystal Lake became the site of an unhinged killing spree. It hasn’t been for a lack of enthusiasm on the part of countless filmmakers, but legal and contractual red tape has kept the property on ice for going on a decade and a half.
You can bet we’d have had a handful of Friday the 13th successors since then, seeing as Nispel’s film remains the highest-grossing standalone entry in the entire saga and its second biggest-earner ever behind only Freddy vs. Jason, while it even set an impressive box office record by landing the largest domestic total in the IP’s entire existence after just 72 hours in theaters.
You’d have thought the remake would have become one of the biggest hits on streaming on the exact date bearing its title seeing as it was only a few days ago, but Friday the 13th has arrived better late than never to become not just one of the most-watched features on Netflix per FlixPatrol, but a Top 10 success on Max and Vudu in the United States, as well as being welcomed onto the iTunes worldwide rankings.