Note: I know this review is later than I wanted it to be – I’m working on getting these to you more timely!
Friday the 13th kicks @$$.
Was anybody actually surprised?
It would probably be pointless to explain the story of a movie like Friday the 13th, but I’ll give it a shot. Jason kills people. ha…no, there’s more. The story starts out when a group of college kids hit the forest around Camp Crystal Lake, looking for an urban legend plethora of weed that they can take and sell. Turns out the weed does exist, but so does the other urban legend they heard about – Jason Voorhees. The kids are dispatched in gruesome, awesome fashion and, for the first time since…ugh…Jason Takes Manhattan…we see the words Friday the 13th scroll across the big screen. Six weeks later, the brother (Jared Padalecki) of one of the missing college kids is in town, looking for his sister. He runs into another group of kids, up their at a nice cabin in the woods, for a weekend of partying, sex, and debauchery. We all know how Jason feels about these things, so it isn’t long before he shows up to, you know, do his thing.
Platinum Dunes and Marcus Nispel set a HIGH bar with their first remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Those hoping for that level of tension and suspense will be dissapointed. That being said, the original Friday the 13th series, even the initial outing, were not anywhere near as tense as the original Chainsaw. So expecting the same kind of film from the Friday the 13th remake was probably a little misguided on my part. Compared to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it fails. Taken as a remake of Friday the 13th, this is a damn great film.
All of the conventions we love about the Friday series are here – imaginative kills, gratuitous nudity, stupid college kids, and most of all….JASON! Yes folks, I love Kane Hodder, but Derek Mears is probably going to go down in history as my favorite actor to take on the role. Jason in this film is a tank – an unstoppable machine who will bulldoze through a floor or a wall rather than go around it. He’s smart, vicious, and fast. No more walking Jason in this one who magically always appears ahead of his running victims – Jason will chase you and, if he can’t catch you, find a way to slow you down.
The rest of the cast does a decent job, for a Friday the 13th movie. There’s by no means Academy-Award winning acting in the movie, but I couldn’t find a weak spot in the cast where there was actual bad acting. And for the ladies, it’s got Jared Padalecki, so I can definitely see how this ended up being #1 on Valentine’s Day weekend!
Watch Friday the 13th in a movie theater. I know going to the movies isn’t fun when you have to deal with crowds and people on their cell phones and talking, but this film deserves to be seen on the big screen. Marcus Nispel, ever since he directed the Greedy Fly video for the band Bush back in the 90’s, has had a fantastical visual sense. I’m actually a little saddened that they didn’t get him for the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, but if it frees him up for Friday the 13th part 2, I’m game!
Paul’s Awesomeness Score – 8 out of 10!