AsMoral Wrote:I just got back from seeing the New Line Cinema/Paramount joint effort "Friday the 13th" which set out to rebbot the franchise featuring hockey masked killer Jason Vorhees.

A little back story first:
I spent the last 2 days catching up on all the orginal films in the franchise. From the original to the abysmal Freddy vs Jason in order to whet my appetite for this glossy remake which was bound to put the scare back in the tired formula of the Jason films.

This new release was produced by Michael Bay, the guy who brought us the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Transformers. Where those two films succeeded Friday the 13th fails on epic proportions.

The first rule of making a horror film is to make it scary. I mean...it must have true fear in it. Friday takes everything scary about a horror movie and replaces it with characters the viewer doesn't care about, horribly written dialogue, more titties than at a mammography clinic and horribly rendered CGI death scenes.

In the defense of the film, Friday the 13 was never a horror film as it was a gorefest, and in that regard this new film delivers in spades with a staggering body count and all the things a viewer looks for in a Friday film. The townies are there, and though they are as crazy as ever they aren't as cartoon-ish as they were in the original films. They are pretty cliche, but nowhere to the degree as portrayed in the first films.

The remake starts with a bunch of kids going to the town of Crystal Lake to look for pot. A lot of pot. Friends told them of a place where the weed grows like..well...weeds. And the harvest is bountiful. So six kids venture out into the wilderness with GPS in hand and after drinking, smoking and screwing they are all systematically slaughtered by a figure wearing a pillowcase over his head. At fifteen minutes in to the film we finally see the title of the film.

Flash forward six weeks later when a young man, Clay Miller, portrayed by Supernatural star Jared Padalecki goes out to search for his missing sister Whitney. He runs into a bunch of pretty boys with Jonas Brother haircuts (Seriously...the hair was horrible and because of this egregious style they needed to die anyway.) and their girlfriends (Translation of girlfriends: sluts). They leader of the pretty boys dislikes Clay immediately though no real reason is established other than establishing Alpha Male status.

We also meet Lawrence, the films token black guy and he lives up to the role by constantly judging others by playing the race card. At one point he is asked to pump gas and he replies..."Do you know how it looks, having the black guy pump the gas? Next thing you'll have me carrying your bags." Then later when he indicates he is working on starting a record label one of the girls asks him if he will be producing rap. "Just because I am black it has to be rap?" he asks, then instructs her not to box him in. Turns out he was producing rap music, but anything to make the character as one dimensional as possible will do.

Shortly after arriving at the palatial summer home of hateful rich boy Trent, played by Travis Van Winkle whose screen credits include Veronica Mars, that's So Raven and some opus called "Billy's Dad is a Fudge-Packer". Yes, for reals...look it up, Jason makes his appearance and begins killing.

And he kills and kills and kills and none of it is scary but every scene is trite and predictable. Tossed in amongst the random carnage is breasts, sex, pot and drinking. We know its a Friday the 13th film, but the excess at which these occurrences transpire is ridiculous. Even when one of the female leads screams out to her boyfriend who is shagging another chick at the time, he ignores her to continue his copulation with the trick of the minute.

Let's get back to the dialogue though.

I don't know how old the author of the screenplay is, i am too lazy to IMDB it, but he must think that all teens talk like the ones on MTV's The Real World do. The script is rife with sexual innuendo, drug references and drinking. Perhaps kids talk like that these days and I am finally feeling every one of my 33 years. If that is the case then our country is in need of serious help. One scene in particular follows the film's only Asian character as he goes to the shed and finds a hockey stick. He holds it between his legs and says, "It bends tot he left, just like my dick." WHAT!?!?! Who is he talking to? why does the audience care which way his junk bends. (Mine goes to the right to be honest and one ball hangs lower than the other...this is normal so I am told.)

There is nothing remotely entertaining about this mess of a film. The only time I was entertained was when a preview of the teen comedy "Miss March" came on before the feature presentation in which an unfortunate woman in an RV bounced off the bed and out the door of the moving RV. That's comedy...and that is entertainment. 12 seconds in a trailer were leaps and bounds a better entertainment value than the 2 hour film that followed.

The unfortunate part is this film has already scored box office gold and a sequel has already been green lit following the pending reboot of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
With Halloween II, Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, and a myriad of other remakes and relaunches in the works (Scream 4 is coming soon) it will be a long time coming before we see anything remotely scary or original in the near future. And that is the scariest thing of all.

Do yourself a favor and scratch Friday the 13th off your calendar.

(visit my blog at www.genrefinity.net)

Bluesman Mike Lindner Wrote:The flick got abysmal reviews in the NY POST and DAILY NEWS, Tony. I believe the POST review gave it a rare Zero Stars rating.

I don't know what the NY TIMES had to say, though.

ccosborne3 Wrote:Unbelievably the Times gave it a good review. Read it this morning.

Excellent review Tony. I've read some good ones on this site and that one was right up there with the best of them.

AsMoral Wrote:(Mine goes to the right to be honest and one ball hangs lower than the other...this is normal so I am told.)

AsMoral Wrote:...more titties than at a mammography clinic...

AlvinFox Wrote:WHAT!?!?! Who are you talking to?

Regardless, I will still be going to see this because I'm a sucker and...

GeraldRice Wrote:Having a child severely limits my movie-going so I have to make judgment calls pretty quickly about what I will and won't see in a theater. As it stands, "Madea Goes to Jail" (shudder) and "The Watchmen" are our date movies so far this year. I knew "Friday" wasn't going to make the list. My question, Tony, is, is it rent-worthy?

AsMoral Wrote:Maybe if you have a free rental giftcard. I wouldn't pay to see it.