While the different forms of Jason Voorhees himself over the years. The original 1980 Friday the 13th was a Giallo-inspired whodunit, while its first two sequels were more straightforward slasher movies that followed a wordless masked’s murderer as he hunted down interchangeable teens.
Later Friday the 13th movies would reinvent the franchise as a self-aware horror-comedy, a crossover with another hit horror series, a space-set self-parody, and a dark, humorless 00s reboot. However, one of the least successful attempts to breathe new life into the Friday the 13th movies had the potential to make the franchise feel fresh again. While Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was widely disliked upon its release, its twist ending had a lot of untapped potential.
As evidenced by Friday the 13th's influence on the Scream movies, the 80s slasher series originally owed a creative debt to the Giallo sub-genre. While this is often overlooked, the original Friday the 13th was an Agatha Christie-esque mystery where the killer’s mysterious identity was almost as responsible for the mounting tension as the movie's memorable kills. However, the eventual reveal was something of a letdown, and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning’s attempts to revisit this formula were an even worse stab at the whodunit formula. The idea of a different unknown killer replacing Jason to pull off copycat killings could have been a solid way to reinvent the Friday the 13th series, but Roy Burns was the wrong man for the job.
Why Friday the 13th: A New Beginning’s Roy Burns Twist Didn’t Work
The main issue that Friday the 13th: A New Beginning faced was the same problem that a lot of whodunits have, namely that the killer is a barely mentioned background character until the climax. The original Friday the 13th also shared this problem, as Pamela Voorhees was only established after she was unmasked as the killer, and thus it was impossible for viewers to possibly guess the twist no matter how well they followed the clues. However, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning’s twist was significantly more annoying, since the sequel did establish Roy Burns as a character, but did not attempt to hint at his connection to the earlier killing sprees of Jason Voorhees.
As such, the revelation that Roy was the killer still fell flat, despite him technically appearing earlier in the story. While Pamela Voorhees was an out-of-nowhere addition to the cast, Roy Burns was a killer that viewers could technically have guessed, but had no valid reason to suspect. Thus, while a successful Friday the 13th reboot could take the idea of a new mystery killer donning Jason’s iconic mask and make it work, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning failed to find the merit in this idea. Fortunately, that leaves an opportunity for a new Friday the 13th movie to revisit and improve on the Friday the 13th: A New Beginning ending.
