“Did you know a young boy drowned the year before those two others were killed? The counselors weren’t paying any attention… They were making love while that young boy drowned. His name was Jason. I was working the day that it happened. Preparing meals… here. I was the cook. Jason should’ve been watched. Every minute. He was… he wasn’t a very good swimmer… You see, Jason was my son, and today is his birthday… You let him drown! You never paid any attention. Look what you did to him. LOOK WHAT YOU DID TO HIM!”

Although many people attack the “Friday the 13th” series as everything wrong and evil about the horror genre, and that Jason Voorhees is almost like the shark from jaws, annihilating anything in his path, they never really looked into the circumstances and motivations behind him and his mother, Pamela Voorhees. Grief and Rage. They were victims who began to victimize. 

First you have Pamela. A mother who lost her child. There is not much known about Elias Voorhees, the comic series painted him as an abusive drunk and one of the novels as a weird Rasputin-like character, but it seems that she raised young Jason all by herself. He was the center of her world. When she lost him, she was overcome by a level of grief known only to mothers who lose their children. It was a grief that drove her to madness and violence. She did not want the camp re-opened lest someone else go through what she did. 

Likewise, Pamela was the center of Jason’s world. Jason was a disfigured, mentally challenged child. He was neglected and marginalized by the counselors and shunned by the other children. When he was lost in the lake, they could not care less, or were glad the weird one was gone. 

Now whether Jason dies and was resurrected, or survived the drowning to be lost in the woods, he lost his mother. And, they say he saw her decapitated by Alice. This horrible shock made the frighten child become an enraged killing machine. He is no longer a victim, but a killer.  

Killers like Freddy Krueger, Charles “Chucky” Lee Ray or Micheal Myers are all sadists. They do what they do because they enjoy it. Some commentators have noted that Micheal’s heavy breathing is from the thrill of watching his victims and the killing them. Freddy murdered children and actually feeds off the terror he causes. And Chucky sees it as a game. You see just how much of a bastard Freddy is in “Freddy vs Jason” when he uses Pamela and the torment at the camp to manipulate and torment Jason. 

Jason is only motivated by anger. Pure rage. He takes no pleasure in it. He does it because he hates people. People are the cause of his pain and invade his domain. Some people think he is a some sort of Reagan-era puritanical avenger. Which is nonsense, because you are at your most vulnerable and most distracted when you are drunk, high, naked or having sex. Its also what young people who think they will live forever do. Its interesting when people are having fun and in danger. 

Jason and Pamela are outsiders.