Yeah, your description of the protagonists of FT13 sounds like some interesting leads, but it's lipservice. Their backstories are not important to the series. They're window dressing or a backdrop to gain quick audience sympathy. But despite the guy saying this to the cop and his new gal pal, there is no actual psychological development of what this is doing to him or of his personality, really. It serves no purpose to the movie and is just filler so the audience has someone to root for. We never see anything from Whitney that deals with this pain. We actually see Loomis and Michael's connection and see their relationship develop, as well as see the destruction of his sympathy and it leading to his sad mother to slowly lose hope. There is some meat to that movie and even though H2 is a bad film, Laurie's arc is actually crucial. Her discovering she is Mike's sister and her bad dreams involve her entirely empathetic path of self-destruction. There is nothing that interesting in FT3.
And we also see that only reason Loomis makes any 'connection' with Michael for the sake of his damn book deal so he ****e out Michael and anyone else he can to make a buck, then show up at the last minute to try to "reason" with Michael for the sake of some half-assed, underdeveloped excuse for an "arc."
What I described about the Whitney, Clay, and Jenna relationships is not interchangeable, it's much more likeable and gives me much more reason to care whether these people live or die than what I know about the characters in most slasher films, including RZH and H2.
And regarding the predictability of F13...I feel exactly the same way about Rob's Halloween films...he turns Michael into the typical "this is what happened when he was a kid and this is why he kills people" killer, and it was blatantly obvious where the film would go, it was also blatantly obvious that H2 would end with Laurie flipping out and becoming just like Michael, it was obvious that Annie would die and Brackett would go after Michael for revenge...nothing in Rob's films was as surprising as Jenna's death in F13.
That may be, but I never cared for Jason and the movie gave me no reason to start doing it now. And why would you care about any of the victims? They are interchangeable cliches. Yeah, Zombie is guilty of populating his movies with them too, but was there anyone in it whose death was as sad as Annie's or as fully developed as Laurie, Sheriff Brackett or Dr. Loomis (whether you like this interpretation or not)? I thought they were really pretty future soap actors in FT13 waiting to get skewered, myself.
Because I care about characters that are very morally driven, I care about characters that are trying to make ammends for the mistakes of their past, I care about characters that are stuck in horrible relationships and now have the chance at a much healthier relationship that they deserve if they survive...
and the films have always given the audience plenty of reason to care about Jason, one can argue that the films were shallow and redundant, but Jason has plenty of substance; and as for "cheesy kills," I think him setting a woman on fire to bait her boyfriend into a bear trap and making him watch her die, then leaving him there to bait in her friend before bearing a blade in his face is more brutal and unnerving than anything in Rob's Halloween films...granted it was rather difficult to be disturbed by the death of an unlikeable trampy character with "a nice plopper" like Judity, or Lynda, who had a personality that was pretty much interchangeable with her, or the "golden shower" girl from H2, or watching a hillbilly get impaled on the hood of his truck, or some some sleazy club owner get stabbed, etc... I had no reason to give a **** about most of the people Michael kill in Rob's films, atleast in F13 I cared about the core characters.
To each their own. But based just on cinematic qualities, RZH (which is no screen gem) has more to offer than any FT13 film ever made and H2 may, but it is pretty bottom rung. I personally love Carpenter's original and find the original Halloween II a pretty good follow-up that is quite satisfying. I also liked Curtis's performance in H20 enough to overlook how boring that movie otherwise was. And...I like Scream? See...I don't hate
all slashers. 
Yes, I agree, it has more to offer cinematically than F13...because it's one of the best examples of what NOT to do when you're assigned to revive an iconic franchise to come down the pike in some time.
F13 had the audience bursting out cheering and gave me a huge "Jason is back!" adrenaline rush after the opening scene (which was more intense than both of Rob's Trashoween films combined, btw)...after the opening of RZH the audience burst out laughing as though I were at a Will Ferrell film as I sunk into the seat practically ashamed to be a Halloween fan.
Rob is capble of being a competent, and sometimes even great director...the problem is he's a HORRIBLE writer, and the scripts are what ruined his Halloween films, if somebody else had written them they could've been good.
As is, F13 is an F13 film, love it or hate it, RZH and H2 are uneven, unintentional comedies mixed with especially violent episodes of the Springer show guest starring a half-assed Jason rip off that was apparently supposed to be Michael Myers...
F1309 is a better directed film than Rob's Trashoweens, and it's atleast as well acted, and Rob's ridiculous, vulgar rants, geographical and narratively incompetent as far as where Michael shows up and why appearances, the development of his attempts at "character arcs," and his all around butchery of one of the greatest horror villains of all time have very, very little cinematic worth to me at all...much less than the better installments of the F13 series or the Halloween sequels, which Rob made an inferior re-creation of.
I don't think much of the Oscar bait trash or sappy dramas that alot of film buffs can't stop lauding have much, if any, cinematic worth, but then again...I'm not the target audience for that type of garbage, because I don't value it any more than you do the horror genre.
Oh, and TCM 2 which I saw mentioned previously is probably a better film than F1309 and definitely a much better film than either of Zombie's attempts at Halloween.
