FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009)
PARAMOUNT
RELEASED 13 February 2009
One of the big 80’s horror icons is back in this ‘re-imagining’. We begin with a fast-cut chase on June 13th 1980 as a young girl is chased around Camp Crystal Lake at night by Jason Voorhee’s murderous mother. One swift axe swing later and mother’s head lies on the floor. Young Jason turns up to recover his mother’s locket and a rather large and iconic machete. So that’s the main points of the first two ‘Friday the 13th’ films covered already (1980 & 1981).
Skip forward to the present day, and a group of teens (who look quite like a bunch of 80’s teens in fact) drive up to the long-abandoned Camp where they proceed to be dispatched in fast and deadly ways. Of course they get to smoke some weed, have some sex, swear incessantly, and get naked before they get their death scene. Look out the comically fake breasts you’re ever likely to see. They’re also extremely boring, which is perhaps the real reason Jason slaughters anybody who comes near his lair. This action section of the film is actually the best part of the film, and includes a particulary nasty man trap, the old ‘machete-stabbing-up-through-the-floorboards’ routine, and being hung up in a sleeping bag over the campfire.
A neat ‘Friday the 13th’ title card in red letters appears onscreen, indicating that this was just the warm-up act - now let’s get on with the ‘really scary stuff’.
Six weeks later and another horny gang of action-figure-looking teens head up to Lake Crystal to party at the rich kids’ family home on the lakefront. Quite how his family haven’t met the roaming Jason before is a question I’m not sure really deserves much thought. Throw into the mix a brooding biker dude looking for his sister who disappeared six weeks ago, and it’s not long before the killing starts again. Only Jason hasn’t quite completed his wardrobe yet as he’s going around wearing an anonymous rag bag over his head. Fortunately he finds the famous hockey mask in a junk-filled barn loft. That’s the main event of Part 3 (1982) covered then.
I wish I’d been drinking beer and smoking dope along with the characters as this ‘new’ ‘Friday the 13th’ is a boring movie that is only lifted by over-the-top ‘kills’ and titillating... ‘tits’! There is zero investment in the souless characters, they speak inane dialogue, and you can’t wait for them to leave the film with a machete in the head. Jason finishes the movie with a head count of fourteen, and if those fourteen kills were remixed into a thirty minute movie made for late-night TV, it would be worth watching. But why oh why does there have to be another sixty minutes of pointless babble?
It’s all filmed nicely by 2003’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ remake director Marcus Nispel, but that film was a whole load scarier, gorier, and at least had a few amusing ‘hick’ characters.
I noticed two other points worth a brief mention. The ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma music from the original films is back but in a very limited capacity, and in Jason’s underground lair it transpires that Jason is building a collection of whistles. Whether Jason has a particular taste for nu-ravers or Premiership referees I couldn’t quite decide, but I don’t know why else they were there.
TWO OUT OF FIVE