Friday, February 13, 2009

Movie review: Friday the 13th

By Alex Bentley

Michael Bay, having mostly failed to find acclaim as a director (2007's Transformers notwithstanding), has apparently taken it upon himself as a producer to revive every horror franchise known to man, whether they needed to be revisited or not. So far, he's brought back The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (twice), The Amityville Horror, and The Hitcher. Now he's back again with Friday the 13th, soon to be followed by A Nightmare on Elm Street in 2010 (and that's not even to mention this year's The Unborn, which, shockingly, is not based on any previous film).

Resurrecting this particular horror series is not necessarily a bad idea. The last two films in the series strayed far from the original premise, with Jason X spending a good portion of its time in space and Freddy vs. Jason supposedly giving fans of both franchises the face-off they'd been waiting for (and with an $82 million box office, it's hard to argue with that logic). And since so-called “torture porn” in the form of the Saw and Hostel series seems to be on the wane, going back to horror basics may be just what audiences are clamoring for.

This Friday the 13th starts with the promise of a reboot, showing the climactic scene of the original Friday the 13th where Jason's mom has her head chopped off (with the added retconning of a young Jason happening upon her body soon after her demise, which is hard to do since he had drowned earlier in the film). Alas, this prelude is apropos of nothing, as the action fast-forwards to the present day, with Jason still stalking and killing every young, nubile camper that comes his way. In fact, Bay (along with director Marcus Nispel and writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift) decides to give us a two-fer: a 15-minute prologue of campers getting led to the slaughter, and then a main course of the exact same thing.

Um, psst -- he's right behind you.

It's strange for them to not even proffer a hint of cleverness in the way Jason dispatches his victims, save for Jason going sans hockey mask for the first half of the film. The first group's main purpose in going to Crystal Lake is to track down a patch of marijuana being grown in the area so they can take it and sell it themselves. Jason, apparently a big pothead, doesn't take too kindly to this idea, proceeding to take them out one by one (but not before letting two of them have sex, natch). Then, less than a month later, another group of morons college students heads Crystal Lake-way, though they at least have the advantage of being able to stay at a fancy house (however, with nothing but wilderness surrounding them, I'm thinking that the parents who own the house are in cahoots with Jason).

Never go skinny-dipping when there's a psychopath on the rampage.

The film trots out the same ol' tired horror clichés that were old hat 30 years ago without a hint of irony, a la Scream. Nudity has long equaled death in horror, so it's absolutely no surprise that every single female who bares her breasts (or more) soon finds a machete through her chest or head. The two standard-issue male hangers-on (i.e. guys without girlfriends) both make the trek – at night – to a tool shed that's conveniently set far away from the house; one guess as to their fates. The rest of the victims all act as idiotically before their deaths. Here's a question – wouldn't it be much more shocking if someone did everything right and still got killed?

But, of course, your typical Friday the 13th fan is probabaly not in it for the nuances – they just want to see people get slaughtered. Friday the 13th, of course, delivers on that promise with aplomb. That it does so without an ounce of creativity is disappointing but ultimately inconsequential.

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• Weekend North Texas movie news and notes (April 18, 2009)

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