‘Friday The 13th’ Review

Release Date: 2/13/09

Friday the 13th is a legendary horror franchise. Jason Voorhees is an iconic horror villain. So why not give the series a bit of a reboot for modern times? Although this is not a complete remake of the first Friday the 13th movie of 1980 where the killer ended up being Jason’s mother out for revenge, we get a quick recap of that during the opening credits. So this is more of a remake of Friday the 13th Part 2 with Jason as the actual baddie. It opens up with a group on the hunt for some marijuana that is growing in the woods near Crystal Lake. When it gets dark they set up camp. They’re drinking and having sex and just wandering around the woods at night when they stumble upon the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake and are massacred by Jason Voorhees. Six weeks later the brother of one of the girls from the group is still searching for his sister. He’s going around town handing out flyers when he meets a group of people partying at a lavish house out by the lake. Well, you know Jason is going to pop up and take care of these punk kids eventually. The movie was…. Disappointing. Its more of a comedy than a horror film. And that’s just not what I wanted with this remake.

I’m a big fan of the remakes of Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They are brutal horror films giving a different take on the famous stories. I was expecting the same thing with this but instead got a silly followup that could have just been called Friday the 13th Part 11. Its no better than the ridiculous sequels from the 90s. I wanted a serious horror film and I did not get it in the least. But all that aside, the movie is actually really funny. The deaths are ridiculous, Jason is outta control, and the kids are stupider than ever. I found myself laughing out loud a lot of times when I probably shouldn’t have been. Every cliché character you can think of showed up. We had the ultimate badass, the mysterious outsider, the token black guy, the stoner, and every single chick was smoking hot.

If you want a horror movie that you can laugh at more than it makes you jump in fright then the new Friday the 13th movie is for you. There’s gratuitous nudity (and its “Stupendous”), terrible acting, over the top deaths, and a big masked supervillain who can’t be killed. On the ride home from the theater we just talked about it and laughed nonstop, which is a good thing and a bad thing. I know the filmmakers and writers probably meant for some comedy to be mixed in to this horror film but most of the stuff we laughed at was probably supposed to be taken seriously. Let’s just say Jason has been taking some archery classes in his spare time. So in conclusion, I went into the movie wanting a serious horror film so I can’t possibly let this crap slide… but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t watch it again with a bunch of people and laugh all over again. This is a Whack that isn’t necessarily the worst kind.

IMDB – N/A
Rotten Tomatoes – N/A
Movie Wiseguys – 5/10