Lex Rosenberg

She's on Tumblr again? LONG POSTING? What is this, 2012?

Hi Tumblr. It's been a bit. But I decided it was the best place to talk unhinged shit that wouldn't make sense on other sites, so here we go again I guess. Last time I was here, I was straight. Now I'm uh...not.

ANYWAYS. Today's Friday the 13th, and it just so happens to also be OCTOBER (aka Halloween season). So y'know. Extra spooky.

I feel like there's only one REAL way to celebrate this day. To talk about the slasher of Camp Crystal Lake himself, Jason Vorhees.

I've had a fascination for horror movies since my edgy years from late 2009 through...honestly most of high school (I wore fingerless bike gloves to school every day--I didn't bike to school. I was CRINJ CITY). I remember watching the major slashers like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, one of my most cringe moments was making a YouTube video about the 2010 reboot of Nightmare on Elm Street and talking about how good it was (15 year old me, for the record, was an idiot).

I know for a fact that I remember watching the original Friday and Friday Part 2. But I'd never seen the other TEN films in the franchise. So earlier this year, I got together with a friend and over the course of a few weekends...

We watched every Friday the 13th film that currently exists (as of posting) and ranked them.

Our Rating System

This was our first time doing a ranking for horror, so we didn't come up with a fun system at the first go around, save for an exception.

For the purposes of consistency of our lists, we're going to use the following rating system: Actually Good. These are the movies that are actually genuinely good watches, with fun characters, good writing, and good sequences. These are the best of the best.

Fun Time 🎉. The movies in this category might not be amazing, but they are still a fun time and are still pretty good watches for the type of horror we're watching.

A Movie™️ . These movies range from almost fun to not boring or bad enough to be lower on the list. We'll explain these as we go.

Why? 🤷. There are movies that take things into confusing territories and make things more convoluted for one reason or another. If it makes us say "Why?" then it's here. No 🙅. These are the worst ones--reasoning will explain.

Caveats

I think it's important to note that while my friend and I love watching horror, we don't think the Friday the 13th franchise is particularly scary. But we were interested becuase the 80s slashers are known to be just fun, and that entices me more than anything. So while these aren't scary when you compare them to modern horror like Barbarian, we were looking for fun times.

Also, should go without saying, but these are subjective opinions.

So with that out of the way...let's do this in order from top to bottom.

Actually Good

Jason Lives! Friday the 13th Part VI

If you watch any of the Friday the 13th movies, make it this one. Part VI is not just a solid slasher movie with great production values, but it's also just a good movie in general.

Tommy Jarvis and Megan are the best duo protagonists we have, with great chemistry. The group of teens we have here are also just fun to watch. People are mostly likelable!

Also the guy who went on to be the voice for Disney's TARZAN is in this movie. Neat.

There's also a ton of great references to other Horror Media because Director Tom McGloughlin is a damn nerd and we LOVE IT. Watch the Dead Meat Kill Count on these. Ya learn a lot.

Friday the 13th Part II

So when it comes to the original canon (aka up through Part IV), this film is the strongest out of all of them. Mostly because of the fact that even though Jason Vorhees doesn't have his iconic hockey mask (which he gets in Part III), the film has straight up the best group of camp counselors/teens in the whole franchise. They're fleshed out more, more sympathetic, and it's just fun.

The only real reason this doesn't top the list is that Part VI is just a better movie overall. There are some weird shot choices, and the cold open is weird and has no pacing.

A Fun Time 🎉

Jason X

Ok, so hear me out. I know the conceit of this movie is WEIRD. It's literally Jason in SPACE. This should be ridicously bad, right?

It's absolutely wild, but the thing about this movie is that it FULLY commits to the crazy concept and it honestly just works. It truly has no right to be as good as it is.

It's not a masterpiece, and it's still objectively wild, but it's a good time.

Friday the 13th (the Original)

It feels weird that the original Friday the 13th movie is in this team, but while this movie is still very good, and still a fun time with great iconic kills; it's still a little anticlimatic and the other films have stronger thru-lines.

Still a good movie, and one that I'd argue that you should still watch because it's the original and iconic, but it's not the best one.

Friday the 13th (2009 Reboot)

So I remember as an edgy teen harping on this movie for being bad (had I seen it? No. Did it matter? Also no). But this is actually a VERY strong reboot. While it doesn't entirely meet the bar of the other movies thus far, it's a fun time that does act as a "best of" of the early films in the franchise.

The characters are also kinda fun.

A Movie™️

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (Part IV)

This is the technically the end of the main story arc of Jason Vorhees--he does die here. Every movie from this point on has a Zombified Jason.

Part IV is higher than the other movies on this list mostly because of the kills themselves--someone gets stabbed while they're holding a banana -- it's wild.

Everything else is kinda meh. Most of the characters here are kinda sleezy and high key horny af, and they're all kind sex pest energy. They kind of suck.

Friday the 13th Part IV: A New Beginning

So Jason isn't in this movie, at all. There's someone else imitating Jason

It's aggressively sleezy and almost pornographic, which isn't

The one main positive this movie has is that it has some very solid characters that very much feel more interesting than most of the characters in the franchise. The kills aren't as good as Part IV, but it's still fun.

Freddy vs. Jason

So I was expecting this movie to be a lot better than it was (for what its worth, it's one of the better Nightmare on Elm Street Movies). It's fine. Not overly worth writing home about per se.

Friday the 13th Part III

So this is an important film that brings us the iconic hockey mask and was also in 3D (because we love gimmicks). Unfortunately, this movie recycles a few kills and the characters are way more one dimensional, and annoying, and there's also some fun problematic racism thrown in.

Why? 🤷

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

This was one of the first movies in the Friday the 13th franchise that BAFFLED me and my friend when watching. According to Dead Meat, they tried to reach out to New Line about doing someting with Nightmare on Elm Street; they refused. So they went, "Ok but what if Jason vs. Carrie White? This slasher franchise needs telekinesis."

Part VII tries to be both a Friday the 13th film and a Carrie film at the same time. It fails at being good versions of both. The teens are forgettable; the telekenetic plotline is interesting but that's kinda not really the point of Friday the 13th, so it's just baffling.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (Part IX)

Woof. This one is real rough.

This was a movie we kept pausing to see how long we had so we can say "We have NO IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING".

The movie tries to streamline things but make things more complicated.

The effects are cool, the kills are ok, and the characters are fine. But the structure is bad.

No 🙅

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

Out of all of the Friday movies, this one is straight up bad. All of the characters are terrible and have no redeeming qualities. Half the movie doesn't take place in Manhattan, and once there, there's also a fun scene that's essentially SA and it's straight up upsetting. When you manage to make Jason look like a good guy, you know you've got a bad movie.

Final Thoughts

I'll go on record and say that Friday the 13th has more good movies than bad ones in my opinion. You don't watch these movies to be scared, you watch them to have a good time.

I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog that I’m a little weird as a person. I’m quirky, kinda sarcastic and obnoxious, and I make more pop culture references than I probably should (and I’m honestly not entirely sure how many people get my jokes) But when it comes to my craft as a choreographer and performer, I’m the weird guy who doesn’t get exclusively get inspired by the works of other choreographers before me. Why? Because I’m nerd of my senior class. When I got to college, I was a broadway nerd (I’m less of that now), and as the years went on, I became a gaming journalist and a hardcore nerd (I mean I made a post about choreography coming from Dungeons and Dragons...that’s peak nerd right there). 

The major change in my life came with my roles at Zelda Universe. I started as a guide writer and in a turn of events that I did not expect, I ended up becoming the Media Director and an attendee to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (aka E3, the big event for the Gaming Industry). Going to E3 as a member of the press drastically altered how I compose myself because it forced me to step up to the plate and make myself seem professional. It was very weird the first year I went to E3 (2015), but by E3 2016, I felt comfortable calling myself a gaming journalist. As an artist, it also is incredibly interesting to talk to the developers of the games themselves and ask them what their process was and some of the reasoning behind their choices. My recent favorite is getting the chance to play Outlast II, a sequel to 2013′s surprise horror hit. During the demo, there was a particular jumpscare that got me so hard it actually made me scream in the middle of the show floor. When talking to the devs, they told me that that specific jumpscare is triggered by how fast your turn the camera, and NOT by touching a door, which allows the tension to continue to build up until you unwittingly set it off. That is genius. 

Sadly, I’ve also gotten a lot of shit for being a dancer that plays video games. I’ve been told by a handful of family members (as well as a few faculty members at school) that I am not prioritizing myself and should be taking more inspiration from dance. Which is unfortunate because I feel like we don’t look at video games complexly. I’ve gotten so much crap for this that I’ve become really good at explaining why being a dancer who plays video games is valid. And because I am currently sitting on a flight for three hours: I figured it would interesting to write about it.

First of all, there’s the obvious answers of storyline, art-style, and music. There are plenty of video games that do an incredible job at creating a plot arc that is gripping and engaging. For me, some of the memorable games that do this incredibly well are The Last of Us, Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, most of the Legend of Zelda titles, and most recently, The Last Guardian (which I still have to finish, but what I’ve played I’ve enjoyed). These are games that have a great score, and have story-lines that make me connect to the characters and find things to use as inspiration. 

Then you have those games that also force you to make specific decisions that do have impact. Telltale is prastically know for this in their titles, but the one that’s had a lasting impact on me was Undertale. Undertale’s art-style mimiced that of Nintendo’s Mother/Earthbound series, and had an incredible, multi-faceted story that wasn’t afraid of being fun and kid-friendly one minute and then actively trying to fuck with your mind the next (there are even some movments near the end where the game takes a page out of Eternal Darkness and Arkham Asylum and crashes on purpose, just for good measure). The game also boasts a fabulous score, and it was one of the very few games (if not the only game) that I found a personal connection with. But what set the game apart from other RPG-style games was the primary mechanic of either sparing every enemy you meet or killing anything that crosses your path. The Pacifist and Genocide runs give two entirely different experiences and completely alter how NPCs view your character. Genocide goes one step further as well and activates a permanent flag in the game’s files upon completion, which alters the outcomes of future True Pacifist and Genocide Runs unless you go into the game’s files and delete the flag yourself (which is not as easy to do for the Steam version). This moral choice has so many different implications and is a very brilliant way of showing that every action has a consequence, which in dance, is an important rule. 

But those aren’t the reasons why I play video games. There is one reason that outshines them all, and it can be consended into a quote by Robert Frost.

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on" -Robert Frost

 If the countless hours of YouTube, Film, and Video game have taught me anything in the 22 years I’ve been on this Earth, it’s taught me that pretty much everything related to media shares a common aesthetic: life in motion. Whether it’s in the depths of outer space in Star Trek, a Deathclaw in Fallout 4, the Demogorgon from Stranger Things, or just two people chatting in a Starbucks, the act of existing in the world naturally evokes movement. Life doesn’t stop. Ever.

In video games, this is amplified depending on the game. Every character and enemy model has to have a specific way of traversing through space. Sometimes that’s as easy as using a reference (like spiders are common in games but they all move like actual spiders...also...fuck spiders). But in the cases of original enemies, somebody has to create a model and then think “Ok...so how would this character traverse through space?” Once you have that, then there are the specific and subtle nuances that all the characters should possess like Idle animations. That is all movement. 

Case in point: look at the idle animation for Team Skull Grunts in Pokémon Sun and Moon.

Now this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in a Pokémon game. Easily. It’s so dumb that it’s absolutely hysterical. However, as dumb as it is, when I think of Team Skull now, I immediately start doing these arm gestures. I now associate Team Skull with that movement. As ridiculous as it is, it’s still movement.

Mankind is currently living in an era in which technology is evolving at a rapid pace. There is so much media in our lives we are pretty much drowning in it. As a result, everything can connect to movement, regardless of sentience or whether or not we can actually see it.

As a citizen living in a country where everything is about to drastically change come January 20th, the arts now have an important role to serve our society and create meaningful work. If we look complextly at the video game industry, we come to realize how much goes into it and how much you can use as a jumping-off point for anything. 

And that is something I intend to do--I am interested in deconstructing current media and technology down to a series of movement principles to create work (either performed live or produced as films) that not only references the culture, but also comments on it as a way of showing the complexity of modern existence through technical and natural movement. I’m also interested in utilizing technology like Twitch to create work that puts control into the hand of the audience.