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When it comes to horror canon, even the more popular franchises have a shoddy sense of continuity… and that’s at best. When does Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare actually take place? Are the first ten minutes of Evil Dead II canon? What about the last five minutes? If Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood takes place about seven years after Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, which takes place at least five years after Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, What fucking decade is it set in? The 90s? 2000s? When?!
It can be a crisis trying to put these pieces together, for sure. Almost like continuity wasn’t prioritized during these films’ production or something. Strange, isn’t it? If only there was someone to deep dive into horror movie lore and sort all this out for us! If only…
Anyway, here to deep dive into horror movie lore and sort all this out for us is the star of this Spotlight — the ever-informative Josh Spiegel of the YouTube channel, Movie Timelines!
Spiegel takes on the role of cinematic coroner as he dissects timelines to numerous horror series, trying to determine the course of canon in the most coherent way possible. It’s a tough job, but someone other than us has to do it.
On his channel’s conception, Spiegel said:
“The channel was started six years ago as an outlet to talk about horror and to sharpen my editing skills. I was working a retail job that was pretty all-consuming and felt like I needed to make sure that this other part of my life, horror and movies, had some sort of representation.”
Ah, speaking to my soul there, Spiegel. I know that sentiment all too well.
“The entire focus of it stemmed from a random rewatch of Friday the 13th Part 7 and realizing the beginning showed Jason in the lake before showing a young Tina, establishing that this prologue was set after Part 6 before jumping ahead to show her as an adult. That meant there was a long jump within the film, which got me thinking about what year that the film was actually set in.”
See! I’m not the only one who’s wondering about that! Friday the 13th sure confused more than a few people. But Spiegel wasn’t just confused. He was motivated!
“That set into motion the whole process of laying out the timeline… and making a video about it. After uploading it… I decided to continue on. It was mostly a hobby. I wasn’t expecting an audience… But then people just started finding the channel. Views started to increase and subscribers started rolling in… then when the pandemic hit, everything changed. I lost my retail job and focused on Movie Timelines, increasing it to twice weekly and expanding the concepts, adding additional shows.”
You heard him! It’s not just movie timelines he talks about now. He has a whole slew of shows, which include:
- Timelines: “Focusing on the timelines and continuity of franchises including horror, sci-fi, comedy, superheroes, and action films.”
- Dead Last: “Aggregate rankings of franchises and films to determine which is the best and worst.”
- Lists: “Random assortments of different collections of themes including the fan favorite Rip-Off films.”
- Unanswered Questions: “Taking some of the mysteries and loose ends of movies and trying to come up with answers for them.”
- The ‘80s Project: “The newest series, in which I am trying to get through every single horror film of the 1980s.”
That’s quite a massive library of content! Y’all can check all this and more at the Movie Timelines channel here. Also, you can support Spiegel on Patreon right here.
Until next time…
Ciao, friends!
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