e killer. Even more suspense is added by the film's failure to identify the killer, and then its introduction of dual killers at the end.
However, audiences today have become much more sophisticated since the first Friday the 13th and other such early graphic slasher films. The original Friday the 13th had the advantage of an audience not completely inured to the structure and expectations of the genre. Thus, the original film was able to rely on innocent, unaware characters with whom the audience could identify. The film was able to generate suspense, therefore, by placing characters in situations that audiences today know mean trouble. Audience unfamiliarity with the genre is demonstrated, for example, by the cut to the dead body in the bunk above the love-making couple to generate suspense. Today, in such movies, as discussed below in reference to both Jason X and Freddy vs. Jason, the mere act of a couple making love is a signal that a death is about to occur.
Subsequent Friday the 13th sequels suffer from a diminished scare factor because they rely on a killer with which the audience has become all too familiar. The original Friday the 13th was released two years after audiences had already met the hockey-masked Michael Myers in Halloween (1978) and six years after the horrifying cannibalistic family terrorized audiences
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