09/03/10 - Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th (2009, 106 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758746/

This is it. I will finally finish the Friday the 13th franchise with this film. I'll technically still have the Freddy vs. Jason film for the character but all Jason only movies will be wrapped with this watch.

The film starts off with a flashback during the credits of basically what happened in Friday the 13th (1980). The first scenes of the film then show a group of kids looking for marijuana who end up all getting brutally slaughtered by Jason (with burlap sack mask, so like Friday the 13th Part 2). Following the title card we get the actual story. It's typical slasher fare so nothing special. Our leads are: Clay Miller (Jared Padalecki) and his sister Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti) who was actually captured in that prologue bit. Jason Voorhees is played by Derek Mears.

Well, Friday the 13th raises an old question of movies: is a remake (or reboot) good just by paying homage to its roots or does it have to go beyond that, and if so, what must be added? Basically, Friday the 13th is a really enjoyable film for someone that's seen Friday the 13th (1980) through Jason X (2001). It does the necessary things a lot of the time to remind a viewer about the establishments of the character that existed in the earlier films (mainly borrowing from the first four). Sadly, Friday the 13th doesn't go much beyond that though and actually takes a step backwards in a few places.

First, the character of Jason is given just too much personality. I think he works best when he is a simple killing machine, murdering anybody and everybody that gets in his way because of some twisted belief that this is what his mother would want him to do. Here, he's a territorial hermit or something that has a legend about him for the history of Camp Crystal Lake. Sure, there's still a story that circulates about him and all that but I don't imagine anyone believes he really exists. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of this character approach. I liked it more where Jason was a hunter as opposed to a defender. Similarly, capturing Whitney for six weeks seems way out of line with his character. I find it hard to believe that Jason was even able to handle rudimentary tasks like giving her food and that. Also, the reasoning that we're I guess supposed to accept is that she reminded him of his mother but this is overall pretty flimsy and doesn't work that well. And I also believe that it gives just a bit too much character development to Jason. One of the fundamental qualities of the original is that Jason is given just enough character development while the teenagers are given even less. This forces the audience to reluctantly bond more with Jason and feel nothing for the death of the teenagers. I didn't feel that was necessarily true here. I mean, Clay had a motive for being there and a few of the random teenagers had enough screen time to get a bit of a personality. These two points is where the movie really falters in my opinion.

Where Friday the 13th works well though is in the way it gives little nods to the previous films. I liked the really long opening sequence. This was something done in Friday the 13th Part 2 and with Jason looking the way he does for this segment it was a nice little touch. Also, I thought the combining of the elements of the first four films worked really well. They took enough of each to blend everything well together and it never seemed like too much back-story or too many references were crammed into too short of a time.

One basic element of the Friday the 13th franchise is the kills. Sadly, in this one they weren't all that original or interesting. The special effects budget was clearly higher here than in any other previous installment though which worked well. But overall the only unique kills were the sleeping bag burning and the bear trap death which were okay but nothing incredibly special. The other staple of Friday the 13th is the copious amount of nudity and in this regard the remake really went beyond anything before. I guess times have really changed from 1980 to 2009. The constant references to drugs were also included. One interesting note is that the drug of choice moved from marijuana to cocaine and then back to marijuana. Not really a movie note or anything, just another sign of the changed times I guess.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. Friday the 13th works well as a slasher and in paying tribute to its founding base in the first four Friday the 13th movies. But beyond that it doesn't really do anything of its own. However, it does have basic things such as good structure, good pacing, establishing shots, and things like this to make it come off as pretty professional which I can't actually say happens for some of the other films in the series.