Friday the 13th....
Growing up in the 80's and having an uncle as a horror hound shaped my life in ways that I could not forsee. I grew up on a steady diet of Dawn of the Dead, Texas Chainsaw and Freddy Krueger. Dawn and TCM have been remade, and Elm Street is in the works, but Friday the 13th was always a staple of our saturday night viewing. A masked man in a hockey mask chopping up over sexed teens was as simple a plot line, even a 7 year old could follow it. What more would I need. After Friday, there was belched onto the screen a bevy of slasher horror films that tried to capture the simplistic formula and the success of Jason's escapades, some succesfully, some not so, but it was a boon time for we horror fans. America seemed to really hit its stride with these films and truly developed the American way of horror that would follow for years to come. Now with the remake of Friday the 13th it truly seems that Horror has come a full 360 and the trend begins again. Much like the early Jason films, even a part two has been greenlit before the movie even hit the theaters, but Im not here to talk about the merits of continually remaking a single franchise. Im gonna review F13.
Warning tho.... Here there be minor spoilers.... Like you can truly spoil a Friday the 13th movies plot, but a warning non the less.
The beginning of the movie recognizes the events that transpired in the original Friday movie, showing the last few minutes of Mama Vorhees reign of carnage and subsequint beheading, setting up Jason newest rampage. We then get a slew of your stereotypical over sexed, over drugged teens just prime for the slaughter. Our heroes, or victims as it were, because truly, Jason is the Anti Hero of the movie, is paraded before us and then within 20 minutes, all are killed, then we get the title of the movie.... Huh? 20 minutes of setup and we havent even seen the true stars of the films.... Wow. Enter our new heroes, again, over sexed and over drugged and let the slaughter begin. What more do we need, truly.
Just as one would expect in a Friday movie there are Boobs a plenty, and for the women and gays in the audience, some pretty prime, beefy guys, all a treat for the eyes to say the least.
Now for the kills. The kills are what we came to see, right? Dont deny it you freak, we want BLOOD!
The movie falls a tad short in that aspect. While there are plenty of deaths, the kills arent terribly inspiring, but the makeup and effects are pretty fantastic. Jason himself is much faster than the lumbering Jason we are used to, adding a more hightened sense of danger, and to continue another tradition, Jason, it seems, can pop up from nowhere, make his kill and dissapear into the shadows, onto the next victim.
You can tell that the movie is made with love and respect of the franchise that they tried to emulate. While not a perfect movie by any stretch of the word, it was nice to see Jason up to his old tricks on the big screen once more. Who knows, hopefully this will entice the new generation of horror fans to seek out the old movies and love them as much as we older fans do. Lets face it, the remakes are going to continue and we can either choose to bitch and moan, or sit back and enjoy the ride.
Lets give the Frday the 13th remake 2 1/2 Bloodied Machetes out of 5
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