Movie Review: Friday the 13th (2009)

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Friday the 13th (2009)–No Stars

Don’t see this movie. There’s little reason to elaborate. But feel free to continue reading if you really want to know why you should skip this Friday the 13th. It’s an empty, unsatisfying motion picture experience, a movie so devoid of anything resembling entertainment it becomes unbearable before the halfway point.

You see, most splatter films should be taken for what they are. This Friday the 13th can only be seen for what it’s not. It’s not campy fun. It’s not gory. It doesn’t have any decent scares, not even ones that are manufactured by the sound guy. No, there’s nothing here.

The Michael Bay-produced, Marcus Nispel-directed Friday the 13th is a glossy, senior portrait of a Jason Voorhees movie when it should be, at most, a glamor shot. You know, something slightly silly, but with enough momentum to make you accept that an un-supernatural machete-wielding maniac, who may or may not be mentally-challenged, can summon the creativity to kill pretty people in some pretty gruesome ways.

Sure, there are still pretty people in this reboot. And most characters, straight out of an American Eagle Outfitters advert, do get killed. This Friday the 13th forces something on its audience that no Jason flick should require: an emotional connection.

This Friday the 13th is not just about a bunch of kids getting naked and getting slain. Here we’re forced to endure an overly-dramatic storyline about a young man Clay (a teary-eyed Jared Padalecki) searching for his sister who went missing near Crystal Lake. She disappeared three months prior when she and her friends were out searching for a marijuana crop in the woods. Jason (Derek Mears) killed all of the friends, rather quickly in fact, but kept the sister alive because she looks like Jason’s mom.

As in the original movie (the one without Jason), Mrs. Voorhees is beheaded in front of little Jason after going nutso and killing a bunch of camp counselors. This Friday the 13th makes the decapitation that drives Jason mad the film’s opening sequence, treating it as a minor plot point that should have been disregarded altogether.

But back to Clay. He runs into yet another group of college kids who will become Jason’s next victims. (They’re college kids now because it’s apparently no longer kosher to imply teenagers would have sex, drink and smoke pot.) Following this meeting, there’s whining, screaming, posturing and douche-baggery. But worst of all, there are kills that are not nearly violent enough for a group of characters so unlikeable.

Like the 2007 Halloween remake, this Friday the 13th feels like it’s ignoring the conventions of the genre because the filmmakers think they’re creative enough to remake them. Sure there are breasts and blood, at times both at once, but this horror flick feels about as raw and inspired as, well, any other Bay or Nispel film.

Jason doesn’t need a back story. The characters don’t have to have a purpose. Including both elements with rigorous intent means this Friday the 13th overreaches so far that it’s barely a slasher film.

Of course, the finale sets up the film for an inevitable sequel. I’m dreading it already. Heck, I’d rather take a machete to the skull than sit through another Friday the 13th from these guys.