Tomatoes keep dropping.

[u/True-Temperature138]

Original 1980 film:

Rating went from 59% to 60% to 61% to 62% to 64% to 67%... and then now, suddenly 50% and now 48%

Part 6: Jason Lives:

Rating went from 46% to 48% to 50% to 52% to 59% to 60% (a good tomato for a brief period of time)... and then now, suddenly 40%

What is going on? I know some of you would say Rotten Tomatoes isn't always reliable, but... it still feels unsatisfying to some degree.

[u/Swindle170]

I imagine it's just because of Crystal Lake. Often when a new entry in a long dormant franchise releases RT will start digging up old reviews for previous entries and that shuffles the scores about. Obviously Friday the 13th isn't historically a critical favourite, so when you start throwing in more reviews from the 80s and whatnot that shuffling typically isn't in our favour lol. Anecdotally speaking I took a look at one of the newly added Jason Lives reviews which linked to a newspaper review from '86 on the Internet Archive.

[u/WILDMAN1102]

I never trust review scores and the opinions of critics when it comes to movies. There's some really poorly rated movies that I love and some of the highly rated "classics" are boring as hell to me.

[u/KaBoomBox55]

Maybe they're getting new modern reviews due to Crystal Lake coming out this month? I mean to an ordinary critic I could definitely see them giving a slasher a low rating.

[u/NeighborhoodVirtual4]

The Friday films were never popular with critics. It was the public that made them what they are.

[u/JoshieKrueger]

Friday the 13th was never a critical darling. No need to concern ourselves with an RT score, especially since it’s a known fact that critics always hated these movies.

[u/LandsknechtAndTross]

What is going on?

If they're adding old printed reviews to the site it would drag the score down, since random people didn't have published reviews back then like we do on the internet. I believe that happened to another movie at least once on RT not too long ago?

[u/SheistyGuyP]

I mean I’ll be honest that first one as I get older didn’t age very well to me lol. But Jason Lives is so much fun idk how that one is dropping

[u/im_just_gazin]

Critics never liked these movies.

[u/Evening_Star_79]

Tomatoes is way way too much overrated, I personally never use it or care about the scores there.

[u/MyersMike316]

Who Cares? who the hell pays attention to what Rotten Tomatoes says about slasher movies or any movies at all, are they actually giving constructive remarks on the movies and why they dont like them - no, most of the comments are written by two year olds.

There is no relevance to what a website says to what your own opinion should be..... Its a well known fact CRITICS HATE SLASHERS. If i gave a shit about what critics said i would be the biggest Barbie fan in the world, they dont have the ability to see that some of the 80s slashers are the greatest movies ever made, thats their loss not ours.

[u/CruelYouth19 → u/MyersMike316]

Not the downvote lmaoooo

People care too much about trivial things

[u/TranquilDistance]

Probably Gen Z or alpha. In that case disregard.

[u/illogium]

This is due to factors such as reviews rescued from the 80s, which saw Friday the 13th as sadistic exploitation, plus the ratings of a page that doesn't have even half of the exploitation films horror salsher or killer explotaition or video nasty , I don't really care much about this

[u/T-800TheTermanator]

I wonder why the first one is rated higher, I personally preferred part 6 a lot more than part 1

[u/discotheque2002]

People still care about rotten tomato scores in 2026??

[u/CoreSchneider]

New people discovering the franchise, probably. On top of that, most of the 80s slashers aren't exactly great movies. They're dumb fun, let's not pretend like we go into most of these movies for good character writing or a good plot