Unreal Movie Review: Friday the 13th

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After all these years, he really just wants a hug.

Since it’s now been a few years and counting since Hollywood officially ran out of ideas and started only making movies based around superheroes, video games, toys and older movies, a remake of the cult classic Friday the 13th was unfortunately inevitable.

And sadly, like the tragic reworkings of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween before it, the Friday remake follows in their footsteps by removing any sense of tense pacing the original film had and replacing it instead with copious amounts of gore and boobs.

Friday the 13th actually follows three separate groups of young hooligans, all on doomed quests to avoid being butchered in the woods. We only catch the tail end of the first slaying, years ago at Camp Crystal lake where an angry mother slays a group of camp counselors for letting her son drown. But the final victim on her list is equipped with a standard camp counselor-issued three-foot machete, and Mrs. Voorhees gets her head chopped clean off, right in front of her all-of-a-sudden-alive-again deformed son.

Years later, a group of teenage douchebags head into the woods to forage for a wild weed crop (seriously). As they stumble upon Camp Crystal Lake, they’re all hunted down and slayed in various states of undress, making the audience grin as they think that the movie may possibly be over already, twenty five minutes in. But then the title credits show up.

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Just stand up already so we can see why they cast you.

So with two piles of dead teens amassed before we even see the title of the damn movie, what could possibly be next? Why, how about another Escalade full of morons?

The casting calls for Friday the 13th really only had two types they were looking for: “Guy you hated in high school,” and “Girl he was banging.” Now multiply them six times or so, and you’ll have 90% of the body count in the film. This last group has a black guy and an asian guy (Aaron Woo, what the hell are you doing in this movie?) for comic relief purposes only, and one outsider (Jared Padalecki) who rolls in on his motorcycle to look for his sister, who was in the last batch of weed-hunting Jason victims.

The cops don’t believe anything’s happened to her, because there’s no trace of any of the last group in the woods. Apparently over the years, Jason has gotten very adept at hiding bodies, scrubbing blood spatter off trees, and disposing of entire cars without anyone being the wiser. He’s also spent enough time around the camp to perfect a number of other non machete-related skills such as axe throwing and archery. Sniping the the head of a driver of a speedboat going 40 miles an hour two hundred years away would probably earn you a gold star if the camp was still in session.

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“Um, like, people are dying! Hello?”

So of course Jason is offended by this new group of annoyingly handsome teens traipsing around his woods, and he sets out to kill them in various gruesome fashions one by one like we’ve seen eighty thousand other times in any of the previous dozen films. Gone are things like “rising tension” and “physical possibility” (I’m convinced that Jason can actually teleport now), and we’re able to predict the exact moment of every single kill (pull a curtain back and he’s never there but ALWAYS BEHIND YOU).

Oddly enough, the tree scrubbing, vehicle hiding Jason has apparently had a change of heart with this latest batch of victims, leaving arrow skewered boat drivers (complete with boat) wrecked on shore, axe hacked black guys floating in the hot tub, and preppy tools attached to the back of a tow truck that’s currently driving into town. I guess he got bored of subtlety and feels like taking on a SWAT team in the near future.

It would almost be fun to root for Jason to kill all of these immense idiots if it wasn’t so damn boring to watch. Friday the 13th has to be one of the most needless horror remakes of all time, as it brings nothing new to the table. At least Texas Chainsaw was shot and edited well, at least Rob Zombie crafted a more in depth origin story in Halloween, but Friday the 13th? Uh…well, the teen douchebags drive an Escalade this time…and they swear more. Yeah 2009!

Three classic horror franchises down, and only one, Nightmare on Elm St, to go. But lord knows it’s probably almost time to remake Scream as well. Bad Hollywood! Bad! Go sit in the corner.

0.5 out of 5 stars

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“Don’t stereotype me because of my hair, bro!”

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