Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
2/15/09
First, a confession:
since I was 8 when the original came out and didn't really develop a taste
for horror until my 20's, I've never seen any of the original Paramount
Friday the 13th movies. And as such, I'm not the best judge
of what fans might be looking for in a remake. But viewed without
much experience with what Jason's all about when he's not battling Freddy
(now THAT was cool!), the new Marcus Nispel-directed, Michael Bay-produced
Friday is a slick, fun slasher movie that at times is even better
than that. The acting is far better than the genre average, and Nispel
really knows how to film the investigation of a spooky room. Could
we have spent a little less time in the company of debaucherous young adult
losers? Sure, but somebody's gotta take that ax in the back.
1980: Pamela Vorhees
(Nana Visitor, sadly getting less screen time here than she did in the
movie's teaser trailer, perhaps the victim of rumored reshoots?) has gone
mad and murdered all the counselors but one at Camp Crystal Lake for not
keeping an eye on her drowned son Jason. That final survivor (Stephanie
Rhodes) fights back and severs her head, leaving the miraculously living
toddler to swear vengeance of his own. Flash forward 29 years and
five friends are trekking through the woods on a camping trip. Among
them are Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti) and her boyfriend Mike (Nick
Mennell), who go off to investigate the famed remains of (ulp!) Camp Crystal
Lake. One by one, the now-adult Jason (Derek Mears) attacks, impales
or burns them all. Six months later, Whitney's brother Clay (Jared
Padalecki) arrives in town now that the local police have completely given
up the search for the missing campers. His plan pretty much consists
entirely of handing out Missing Person fliers and looking around, but when
there's a huge honking killer stalking the area, it's not hard to find
him. Another group of carousing youngsters have turned up in town:
Trent (Travis Van Wickle) has brought his girlfriend Jenna (Danielle Panabaker)
and four of their friends to his parents' lake house, mostly to show off
how rich they are. But when your lake house is on Crystal Lake, it's
probably not a good idea to start partying, hitting the bong and having
sex just like those counselors who really should have been watching little
Jason...
There's good reason to think
that the extended Friday the 13th cut producers have promised on
DVD includes a good deal more detail and backstory, because what we get
in the movie is a lot less than we were promised while this franchise reboot
was shooting. It's true, we see Jason put down that bag on his head
and pick up the hockey mask, and tantalizing bits of motivation and explanation
are lying all over the periphery, but the movie could have used some more
and there are dangling references aplenty suggesting it was once there.
The movie's at its' best when Jason's grinding his ax against the Miller
family: Righetti is outstanding and Padalecki makes an effectively
upstanding hero (very important given how all slasher movies could really
be set in Hell for how brutally they punish even the slightest moral transgressions).
Longtime stuntman and heel Mears is a tremendous Jason, radiating wild,
tortured pain through the eyeholes of that hockey mask. Panabaker
is always likable even when she's not very nice (see Mr.
Brooks. Please.), and provides Clay with a nice sidekick.
When the story sticks to Jason's diseased world and Clay's search for his
sister, it makes really strong use of the iconic energy of Crystal Lake's
resident psycho.
But the movie is also well
aware of the real hook of the 80's slasher genre. Watch pretty people
do really naughty things and then kill the hell out of them for it:
it's a cathartic enactment of every kid's fear that if they step out of
line, unspeakable punishment awaits them. It's more entertaining,
of course, if those transgressors seem to deserve at least speakable punishment,
and Jenna's friends are a motley bunch of losers, led by the gloriously
odious Van Wickle as the Most Spoiled Punk Alive. From the moment
he asks Clay to step aside at a mini-mart he's asking to post his Missing
flier because he's clearly not buying anything, you know this is a guy
who's in need of some alone time with a machete. Most of the other
losers are just that, although actresses Julianna Guill, Willa Ford and
America Olivo sure do look great naked and the movie features so many stoners
it had me musing about the possibilities of a Harold & Kumar vs.
Jason sequel. It's to the filmmakers' and actors' credit that
all these characters play as real Young People I Don't Want to Spend Any
Time With, and not like the awkward facsimiles that populate most horror
flicks. Still, I could have spent a little less time with them.
Slasher fans might be disappointed
by the lack of variety or elaborateness in Jason's murders: pretty
much everybody gets impaled, as often in the head as elsewhere. But
for plain old thriller fans like me, the less time spent on people screaming
and dying the better, I prefer the stalking to the slashing and Nispel
directs those sequences really well, drawing our eyes away from the part
of the screen he's about to unleash hell on with consummate skill.
I also liked Steve Jablonsky's score, which makes good use of that iconic
little “t-t-t-t-t” musical sting. The movie looks great all the way
around, and it's nice to see a homicidal maniac like Jason attack somebody
during the day once in a while for variety's sake.
Friday the 13th breaks
no new ground and will irritate the bejesus out of anybody expecting more
than just a really well made slasher movie. But it moves fast and
is a lot of dumb fun (and I do mean dumb, I bet these kids really wished
they'd rented Scream before heading out to Crystal Lake) when it's
firing on all cylinders. And because the whole Voorhees/Miller rivalry
is set up so effectively, I wouldn't at all mind seeing a sequel grudge
match. Gee, you don't think they'd make a sequel, would they? |
