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Starring
Jared Padalecki
Danielle Panabaker
Amanda Righetti
and
Derek Mears
as Jason Voorhees
Directed by
Marcus Nispel
Final Grade:
C+Rated R for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, language and drug material
a review by Heith Carnahan
The Rundown
Bringing us back to where it all began, this newest installment in the enormously profitable Friday the 13th franchise takes us back to Camp Crystal Lake and the monstrous killer that picks off camp counselors one at a time.
Clay Miller's (Jared Padalecki) sister disappeared in the woods surrounding the old camp, and he's been back to the area several times to look for her. Against the advice of locals and law enforcement, he teams up with a group of vacationing college students to get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearances that have plagued the area for decades.
The Jason of old
Although you could certainly call this new Friday the 13th a reboot of the original series, it bears very little resemblance to how the original story played out. That's not necessarily a mark against it; the old Jason films of the 80s have become as much a punch line as they have a horror standard, having turned every imaginable kill and chase scene into the very definition of camp. While this new movie is worth seeing, I can't help but think director Marcus Nispel has missed an enormous opportunity to transform the Friday the 13th brand into something truly scary and a bit more fleshed-out than before. Those were my hopes, anyway; for the most part, I didn't get my wish.
In 2007, director Rob Zombie rebooted the Halloween series and turned an equally iconic madman into something believable and human -- and all the more scary as a result. Nispel and company didn't go to such lengths with this Jason, and on that front, I'm disappointed. We see elements of Jason's life that we've never seen before: a detailed look at where he lives, what he does with his victims, and even the fact that he is currently holding alive a woman who bears a superficial resemblance to his mother. I found this to be possibly the most interesting aspect of the new film, a very brief insight at what it would take for Jason to do something other than dismembering absolutely everyone in sight.
But other than that and the jacked-up production values New Line Cinema and Paramount Pictures have poured into the reboot, this is very much the Jason of old. With new technology and improved special effects comes increasingly gruesome killings (Aaron Yoo's turn, in particular, with what I believe was a screwdriver), but of course, very little fleshing-out of the characters and no real suspense for the audience as a result. We have nothing invested in these characters; as each one was fileted, it occurred to me I sometimes couldn't remember the character's name, and so the film sank into the same old mechete-fest we've seen eleven times before.
The Bottom Line
Fans of the franchise won't go away disappointed. I had higher hopes for this outing, although I don't know why, given the pedigree. Still, Friday the 13th isn't a movie most people are on the fence about; you're either into it or you're not.
-- Heith Carnahan, heith @ movie-popcorn.com