Editorials
The Franchise’s Bizarre Outlier: ‘Friday the 13th: A New Beginning’ Turns 35
If there’s one thing slasher movies have taught us, it’s this: the killer is never dead. Especially if the killer happens to be Jason Voorhees.
No matter how hard many final girls have tried, Jason Voorhees keeps popping back up to prowl Crystal Lake anew. Except, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter threatened to put him in the ground for good. Releasing as the Golden Age of Slashers drew to a close, The Final Chapter saw Voorhees slain by a young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman). Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, released 35 years ago on March 22, 1985, marked a pivotal crossroads for the franchise. The second entry in what would become known as the “Tommy Jarvis trilogy” marked a strange outlier, offering a sleazy whodunnit that attempted to change the trajectory of the series.
Set a few years after the events of the previous film, A New Beginning marks, well, a new beginning for Tommy Jarvis (now played by John Shepherd). In the time between films, poor Tommy suffered mental breakdowns resulting in stints at psychiatric hospitals. Released into a halfway home for at-risk teens, Tommy’s struggles with assimilating back into society become complicated when Jason Voorhees seems to resurface to begin killing those around him.
Except, much to the chagrin of fans, Voorhees remains dead throughout this entry.
In A New Beginning, a heavy emphasis is placed on Tommy’s unstable mental state. He’s withdrawn and intense, breaks into a sweat quickly, and suffers nightmarish visions of Jason Voorhees. Like the closing moments of Tommy in the previous film, Tommy’s current mindset is meant to present him as an unreliable protagonist. A grisly ax murder of a fellow at-risk teen, Joey, sparks a new wave of killings. It could be a triggering point for any of the unstable inhabitants of the halfway home, or the wacky and bitter redneck family neighbors, but it could just as likely be Tommy. The default, of course, is that Jason Voorhees is the killer, but the masks become a dead giveaway to the copycat killer. Flashbacks and hallucinations show the real Jason’s mask, with red detailing, and the copycat wears a knockoff mask with blue chevrons.
The killer? Paramedic driver and father of the murdered Joey, Roy Burns (Dick Wieand).
It’s not just that this sequel attempts to shake things up by featuring a whole different killer in a new setting that makes it such a weird outlier in the canon, it’s also director and co-writer Danny Steinmann‘s tonal and aesthetic approach to the whodunnit. For one, A New Beginning marks an oddly musical entry. Nearly every character is singing or dancing at some point, including the film’s most jovial kill: Miguel A. Núñez Jr.‘s Demon is caught with his pants down, slaughtered in an outhouse while cooing “Ooh, baby” to his already dead girlfriend outside. Goth Violet (Tiffany Helm) receives a machete to her torso while dancing her heart out to Pseudo Echo’s “His Eyes.”
Steinmann originally planned to give Violet a much more disturbing end, with machete going straight into her crotch. Realizing the scrutiny this kill would receive with the MPAA, the kill was toned down. It would’ve made for a sleazy death in a film that already feels sleazy. The MPAA might have had a severe aversion to gore and violence, but they seemed to have zero qualms about the nudity. Granted, nudity is pretty common in ’80s slashers, but Steinmann appears to use it to overcompensate for the edited gore. Considering his career up to that point had been in porn and exploitation cinema, well, he approached the sex and nudity scenes much the same way.
According to Peter Bracke’s book Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, production for this film was notoriously troubled with hardcore drug use, likely fanning the flames of the movie’s weirdness. The central protagonist is a sweaty mute, allowing Pam (Melanie Kinnaman) and Reggie (Shavar Ross) to handle the heavy living in battling faux-Jason. Outside of these three, you’ve got a slew of bizarre slapstick characters like Ethel (Carol Locatell) and her son Junior (Ron Sloan), the unbalanced teens of the halfway home, and a few randoms in the area that all are behaving as though they’re in an entirely different movie than a slasher. For a whodunnit, none of these characters serve as plausible red herrings. The idea was likely that most would buy into a Jason Voorhees resurrection, or that Tommy was the new Voorhees, but it’s still a strange tonal clash.
At a time when interest in the slasher had waned dramatically, and when the franchise was receiving criticisms for being repetitive, A New Beginning was meant to shake things up. What if someone else took up the masked killer mantle? What if it took place somewhere other than summer camp? It went about as well as it did when Halloween III: Season of the Witch decided to test the waters by removing Michael Myers. The immediate sequel, Jason Lives, course-corrected and put it all in the subtitle; Jason Voorhees returned from the grave.
A New Beginning depicts a fork in the road that was immediately closed in the follow-up. It’s sleazy, oh so quirky, and a wholly unique outlier in the franchise. That means it tends to be one of the most polarizing and divisive entries in the series. You’re on board with this brand of chaos, or you’re severely annoyed by poor, broken Roy Burns’ attempt to copycat an icon.
Even thirty-five years later, it’s a film that still sparks debate among fans.
A new month means a new guide as titles are added (and dropped) from streaming services. Let’s unpack the most exciting titles that are available to watch on Tubi in July 2026.
New to Tubi July Horror Films
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
- Premise: Searching for a cure to Alzheimer’s disease, a group of scientists on an isolated research facility become the prey as a trio of intelligent sharks fight back.
- Why Watch It? Let’s be frank: Director Renny Harlin has made some absolute dogs in the last few years (the less said about The Strangers trilogy the better, though this year’s Deep Water was actually ok). Deep Blue Sea remains one of the Finnish director’s best contemporary efforts, though. Between the great cast (Samuel L. Jackson, Saffron Burrows, Stellan Skarsgård, Michael Rapaport, LL Cool J, Thomas Jane, and Jane’s sleeveless wetsuit), the ridiculous premise, and that damn/dumb song (“My hat is like a shark’s fin”), you basically can’t go wrong with Deep Blue Sea. It’s one of two great shark films gliding onto Tubi this month, so why not stay out of the water and watch this instead?
- Streaming: July 1
Exorcist II: Heretic (1977)
- Premise: Reagan (Linda Blair), a girl once possessed by a demon, finds that it still lurks within her. Meanwhile, Father Lamont (Richard Burton) investigates the death of the priest who performed her exorcism.
- Why Watch It? August sees the release of documentary Boorman and the Devil, which is about the troubled production of this sequel. The notoriety surrounding Heretic has undoubtedly kept plenty of horror fans away from the sequel, but this truly is a “seeing is believing” kind of film. Real talk: it’s undeniably a disaster, but the John Boorman film has also become a minor cult film. Don’t you want to see it to make up your own mind?
- Streaming: July 1
Hostel: Part III (2011)
- Premise: Four men attending a bachelor party in Las Vegas fall prey to the Elite Hunting Club, who are hosting a gruesome game show of torture.
- Why Watch It? What does Hostel look like without Eli Roth? Part III kinda answers the question. Technically Roth is still a writer, but he hands over the directorial reins to Scott Spiegel (best known for acting in Evil Dead films). The result is a film with a terrible pedigree; it’s also the first (and last) entry to skip theatres before the franchise was permanently shelved (until that TV show with Paul Giamatti shows up?). For some horror fans, however, there’s something exciting about a bad low-budget sequel. Just bear in mind that the Hostel: Part III‘s biggest star is Kip Pardue…so adjust your expectations accordingly before hitting play.
- Streaming: July 1
Insidious 1-3 (2010/2013/2015)
- Premise: A family looks to prevent evil spirits from trapping their comatose child in a realm called The Further.
- Why Watch It? It’s hard to believe that the sixth (!) Insidious movie is coming out in a month and a half, but James Wan and Leigh Whannell‘s other horror franchise has been steadily chugging along for sixteen years. It’s a shame that Tubi doesn’t have all five films available to watch, but in terms of quality, you can do far worse than the original trio. The first film is iconic, and the second is basically an extended coda (with some admittedly problematic stuff going on). I’ll go to bat for Whannell’s 2015 directorial debut, though: there’s a few banger sequences in that film that people slept on.
- Streaming: July 1
Man Finds Tape (2025)
- Premise: After finding mysterious video clips, siblings investigate the strange recordings and uncover a disturbing secret spreading through their Texas town.
- Why Watch It? Writer/directors Paul Gandersman and Peter S. Hall‘s well-received found footage film did an extensive tour of the festival circuit, so now is a great time to check out one of the most contemporary titles debuting on Tubi this month. Surely a title that hails from producers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Spring and The Endless) is worth a free look?
- Streaming: July 2
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
- Premise: A depressed musician Adam (Tom Hiddleston) reunites with his lover Eve (Tilda Swinton). However, their romance, which has already endured several centuries, is disrupted by the arrival of her uncontrollable younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska).
- Why Watch It? This beautiful, melancholy vampire film is courtesy of writer/director Jim Jarmusch, who doesn’t often dabble in genre fare. As always, some will quibble if this artsy drama qualifies as horror, but the existential ennui of an eternal life certainly qualifies (bonus: there’s also something inherently sexy about watching Hiddleston and Swinton just lay about). Plus: if Leviticus has you hankering for more Wasikowska, this is an under the radar pick.
- Streaming: July 1
The Shallows (2016)
- Premise:A mere 200 yards from shore, surfer Nancy (Blake Lively) is attacked by a great white shark, with her short journey to safety becoming the ultimate contest of wills.
- Why Watch It? What better time to watch a shark movie than July? The temperatures are soaring and the idea of escaping into the water is so tantalizing. This tight, contained thriller features a great performance by Lively (and that damn seagull!), but it’s the direction from genre fave Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan; the House of Wax remake) that keeps the movie clicking along like clockwork. At 86 minutes, this is a perfect summer flick.
- Streaming: July 1
Vacancy (2007)
- Premise: Stranded in an isolated motel, a couple (Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale) become the unsuspecting subjects of a snuff film.
- Why Watch It? I’m not going to pretend that this Nimród Antal-directed home invasion film is high art, but it is a good time. You’ll likely wish there were deeper characterizations for Wilson and Beckinsale’s David and Amy in Mark L. Smith‘s screenplay, but this mid-aughts thriller is tense, exciting, and just the right amount of grimy. Plus: another short runtime, clocking in at an expeditious 85 minutes!
- Streaming: July 1
July Tubi Originals
The One Next Door (2026)
- Premise: When a mysterious stranger moves in next door to Robert and Tabitha, boundaries are tested, loyalty is questioned, and danger comes for all.
- Streaming: July 10
I Know Where You Live (2026)
- Premise: Sarah thinks she’s found “the one” until his flaws emerge. When she pulls away, chilling threats suggest he’s watching her from inside her own home.
- Streaming: July 24
What’s your favorite from the list above? Will you check out the new Original? Sound off in the comments below
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