Friday The 13th (2009)
Friday the 13th
Directed By: Marcus Nispel,
Cast: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Travis Van Winkle, Derek Mears
Reviewed By: Ken Mooney
Rating: Three-Out-Of-Five Bananas
Jensen Ackles has already graced our screens this year in horror re-make My Bloody Valentine: now, it’s screen brother Jared Padalecki’s chance to shine in Friday the 13th, a re-make/reboot of the popular series that made Jason Voorhees (and his mother) a cult icon. Strictly speaking, the film is the twelfth in the franchise (just one short, dammit, and yes, we’re including the unspeakable horrors of Jason X and Freddy vs. Jason in there. But despite its impressive numbers of predecessors, Friday the 13th brings a breath of fresh air to the franchise, with enough chills to impress and draw newcomers and old fans, picking some choice moments from the first three films and reinterpreting them in a fashion that steers clear of the supernatural, returning the series to its more slasher-fuelled roots.
A short flashback scene provides us with the information that anyone who’s seen Scream will remember, before the movie jumps to the present day and a bunch of twenty-somethings on a camping trip near Camp Crystal Lake who become prey to the inevitable figure of Jason (Mears.) A few months later, Clay (Padalecki) arrive at Crystal Lake searching for his sister, crossing paths with a bunch of partying college students staying at Trent’s luxury home.
This incarnation of Friday the 13th borrows quite heavily from not just the previous films in the series, but if you’re unfamiliar with the series, you’ll notice the horror tropes, whether it’s the Norman Bates touches, the unlikeable machete-fodder characters or the lair (and even a school bus) lifted straight from Jeepers Creepers 2. Even the storytelling part of the movie, introducing a bunch of characters as a means-to-an-end of introducing a villain, will remind audiences of the first half of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof.
For a horror fan, there’s plenty in Friday the 13th to please you, with the body count racking high and plenty of iconic moments. Yet there’s also some points that will disappoint: by keeping this movie more ‘real-world,’ some of the deaths are disappointingly bland when compared with the aforementioned Jason X or Freddy vs. Jason, and when the film leans more towards gore than ‘he’s behind you’ jumps, that adds up to prove the film’s undoing.
Verdict:
Friday the 13th is your typical horror fare, and will please long-terms fans of the series and win over a lot of newcomers too young to have seen the rest of them. But that’s also the downside…there’s a lot here that we’ve seen before. Friday the 13th certainly reinvigorates the franchise, but in doing so, it loses out just a little on the ridiculousness we’ve come to expect from it.
Originally published on FrankTheMonkey.com