Friday the 13th (2009)

"Jason. My special, special boy.", 16 September 2009

I've been a fan of Friday the 13th films for about as long as they've been making Friday the 13th films. I don't much care for some of the more recent entries to the series (for example, I loathe both Freddy vs Jason and Jason X), but I've always had a good time with the earlier movies in the series. In fact, one of my favorite movie-going experiences involves the Friday the 13th films. I can fondly remember back in the 80s going to the local drive-in one night in a driving thunderstorm to watch parts 1-4. What fun! So with a bit of apprehension, I finally decided to take the plunge and check out this new re-imaging.

So how was it? My rating might not indicate it, but the new Friday the 13th wasn't as bad as I had feared. The movie has its fair share of problems (I'll get to some of the more heinous in a moment), but at least I found most of it entertaining. Good action, some imaginative kill scenes, and a few new ideas that actually worked made the movie worth checking out. And as I've written repeatedly in my movie comments, entertainment is the single biggest factor for me when it comes to rating a movie.

But like I said, I had my problems with the movie. I'm not going to go into detail, just a laundry list: the new, smart Jason who apparently is a licensed electrician; the reliance on sudden, very loud music to frighten the audience; the large, lumbering Jason moving with the stealth of a ninja (Are we really supposed to believe he climbed on the roof of that house in seconds with no one inside hearing anything?); the really underwhelming scene where Jason discovers the iconic hockey mask; the absence of the normal, recognizable Friday the 13th music; characters that are actually more annoying than any in the original films (I couldn't wait to see a couple die); Jason taking prisoners; the finale where the two survivors inexplicably drag Jason's body to the boat dock and throw it into the lake; technical aspects like the overuse of shaky cam and the underuse of lighting; the abysmal acting (Jared Padalecki being the exception); and the scene where Jason hangs the girl in the sleeping bag over the fire and roasts her alive is totally out of character with . . . well, totally out of character with the character.

I could go on and on listing things in the movie that bothered me, but really, what's the point. Friday the 13th is what it is, a reasonably entertaining piece of junk cinema that was never meant to test anyone's intelligence. So despite the many problems with the movie I've enumerated, a 6/10 seems about right.

6/10