Why Friday the 13th Part 3 Is Jason Voorhees’ Most Underrated Movie

screenrant.com:

While Friday the 13th Part 3 never got much critical love, the influential slasher sequel deserves to be seen as the most underrated outing of slasher cinema icon Jason Voorhees. The Friday the 13th franchise's legendary villain Jason Voorhees never had as easy a time with critics as his more famous inspiration, Halloween’s Michael Myers. While John Carpenter’s original 1978 sleeper hit Halloween eventually earned the begrudging respect of even highbrow critics, his most famous imitator was never added to the pantheon of horror classics.

While 2018’s Halloween remake was critically acclaimed, 2009’s Friday the 13th re-imagining was largely derided. Jason’s gorier, sillier approach to slasher cinema often earned the killer incredible returns at the box office but never rubbed reviewers the right way. Even with twelve movies to his name, Jason has still yet to produce an adventure that critics admit is a worthwhile addition to the horror cinema canon.

Related: Freddy Vs Jason Almost Recreated Nightmare On Elm Street’s Worst Twist

However, a look back on the Friday the 13th franchise proves that there is one sequel that epitomizes the perennial appeal of the series and never got credit for its successes. Friday the 13th Part 3 wasn’t critically beloved upon release (and still isn’t), but the second sequel in the slasher series nails the potential of Friday the 13th like no other outing. Where Freddy Vs Jason relied on self-aware humor to cajole critics into calling the slasher showdown clever in a self-aware way, Friday the 13th Part 3 is simple, good, gory fun, with an impressively realized villain, a tight plot, a balanced tone, and memorable moments of gore and horror.

Jason Voorhees appeared briefly in the original