Friday the 13th

by | Jan 17, 2015 | The Horror Review News | 0 comments

Well folks, we all had a feeling it was going to happen sooner or later. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN; these are some of the great horror films of legend that have been remade in the past few years and now it’s Jason’s turn. Release rightfully so on Friday the 13th of February, 2009. The FRIDAY THE 13TH re-imagining has finally hit theaters. The original film didn’t even get released on Friday the 13th, as odd as it may sound. It was released on May 9th of 1980. So is this rehash worth the hype? well lets get into the story first, as it’s nothing like the first Friday film, but similar to that of the first three original Friday movies.

FRIDAY THE 13TH is a three part movie. The first part being only a few minutes long with the credits over it that recaps the story of Jason’s mother. The second part shows a group of exposable characters walking though the woods in search of the mother load of marijuana plants that is said to be in the woods. Next to this so called area is the abandon camp Crystal Lake, which the prior story happened twenty years ago. This is all told by one of the most annoying and expendable characters of the film. He takes about Jason and his mother and so on… Next thing you know Jason is there and kills all of them. Flash forward a month or so and a whole new group of college party animals are on their way to Trent’s (Travis Van Winkle) father lake house, which just so happens to be on Camp Crystal Lake. On their way there they run into a guy named Clay (Jared Padalecki) who is looking for his missing sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti). Trent and Clay don’t really hit it off as best buds and the two have an altercation while in the general store. Trent’s somewhat of a girlfriend Jenna ( Danielle Panabaker) sticks up for Clay as she knows he’s only looking for his sister. Anyway things get all settled in when Trent, Jenna and the gang get to the lake house, and Clay is off on a door to door search to see if anyone has seen his sister. On his quest he comes across the lake house and runs into Jenna and Trent again. Trent kicks Clay out of his house, yet Jenna, feeling the need to help Clay goes along for the ride. From here things get crazy as it seems everyone feels the urge to go to the now abandon Camp Crystal Lake. Well from here on out you can figure out what happens. Jason appears and the killing begins.

The script has it’s up and downs, but mainly it’s downs. While I really liked the idea of taking the best scenes from the first three FRIDAY THE 13TH films and showcasing and updating some of the classic kills and scenes, as well as adding some original dynamitic scenes to the story. Now I know that the original FRIDAY THE 13TH films pretty much laid the foundation for the classic teenage horror film, but in the case of this film the characters seemed to be overly written with stupid one liners spewing from their months and the drug use and drinking are overly excessive. Now I know that this is what most collage aged kids do in their spare time. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. But it was thrown in our face so much that it got really annoying. Then there is this whole sub plot of a marijuana field that is growing in the old camp. While it worked at the beginning of the film for the reason why the characters were there in the first place, it seemed to become kind of a theme in the movie, where I wondered if Jason was truly pissed off for what happened to his mother, or was he really pissed off because people were stealing his weed. However, why the characters in this film were your classic cliché characters that always get killed in a horror movie, I must give the screenwriters credit for the character development of each. While the majority of the characters were annoying as hell, they were all very well written. The story is not bad, and it’s a lot of fun to watch, but it’s your basic horror script of teenage kids being killed by some psycho killer one by one until the last one or two left standing defeat him.

The acting in the film for the most part is nothing great at all. with the exception of Jared Padalecki who I felt had the strongest performance in the film along with Amanda Righetti as Whitney and Danielle Panabaker as Jeena, the rest of the cast was pretty blah. I can’t really say they were just plan bad in their acting skills because I have to really lay blame on the cliché characters they were playing and the lines the script gave them. Sure there was your classic comedic one-liners that go over well. But the film is full of a lot of dumb weed smoking characters and quite a few topless bimbos. With roles like that your pretty much just being asked to act stupid so Jason has another reason to kill you. On another note Travis Van Winkle’s character of Trent will probably go down in horror history as one of the most hated characters ever. He’s your classic asshole rich boy and he reminded me so much of a certain kid that I went to High School with. Got to give Van Winkle the award for character that I wanted kill before Jason got a hold of him. He really drove me nuts. As for Derek Mears as Jason Voorhees; I can’t say that he was the best fit for the role of Jason, as I” always see Kane Hodder in the role. But I have to give him credit for trying to be a lot like the classic Jason while adding some new dimension to the character.

The movie does have some great production value, and rightfully so being that the movie had no big name stars to pay outlandish salaries too. I think most of the budget was put right into the production value and it really shows. The sets are really cool looking and the settings and locations really did add some element to the movie. One of the only things that kind of got to me a bit was the large size of Crystal Lake compared to the smaller version we’re all used too from the original films. I felt the big lake took away a lot of the suspense that you got from the smaller lake in the original movies. It felt like there was a lot more running room for the characters to use and it was easier to get away from Jason, where in the other films you always felt that claustrophobic feeling.

The special makeup effects and overall visuals were pretty good in this movie. While some of the kill scenes were taken right out of the original movies; there were some that were expanded upon as well as some new and original ones as well. One thing that I liked about the film was that the gore was not so over the top that you were more grossed out than you were scared. It had its nice suspenseful moments as well, where you can see it paid tribute to the original films.

I really didn’t know what to expect from Marcus Nispel whom also directed the remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, which I found to be alright, but it was a different story than I expected it to be. With FRIDAY THE 13TH at least the script stayed true to the origin of Jason and the FRIDAY THE 13TH storyline. While I did find myself at time rolling my eyes at some of the cliché and predictable scenes, I at least had a good time watching this movie. It’s a movie where you really don’t root for the characters in distress, but your rooting hard for Jason to knock them off one by one. If anything you’ll probably see where I’m coming from. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a fun one thats full of a few scares and some really nice and uncomfortable scenes. It’s no masterpiece in fact it’s pretty bad, but you won’t be bored watching Jason take out a few annoying college kids.

– Horror Bob

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