The Friday the 13th remake that comes out in theaters today delivers over-sexed and under-slaughtered stoners. The film is directed by Marcus Nispel, who also directed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake that came out in 2003. It is produced by Michael Bay, who has been involved with another horror classic remake, The Amityville Horror in 2005.
For those unfamiliar with the Friday the 13th series, the movie tells a little bit about killer Jason’s back story, but it doesn’t exactly match up with the original series. In this remake, Jason drowned at Camp Crystal Lake, but somehow came back to life. His mother, unaware that he had come back to life, went on a killing spree and killed all but one of the camp counselors who ended up killing Jason’s mother. The movie alludes to the fact that Jason is somehow disfigured and possibly mentally handicapped.
The premise of the remake is that a group of teenagers go camping out in the woods to find a field of marijuana, so they can sell it to make big bucks. As night falls, one by one the teenagers are separated from each other and the bloodshed beings. The first 20 minutes of the movie are as good as this movie gets, because while the beginning is pumped full of action all at once, the disjointed remainder of the movie leaves the audience a little bored at times.
Another group of teenagers, unrelated to the first, are on a road trip to one of the guy’s lake house after the happenings with the campers. On their trip, they meet Clay, played by Jared Padalecki, who is searching for his missing sister Whitney. It ends up that Whitney, played by Amanda Righetti, was one of the teenagers camping at the beginning of the movie.
All horror movies have teenage sex scenes and nudity, but once it starts taking away from the horrific elements of a movie, I personally think the director has gone too far. This movie is somehow still rated R even with all of the nudity in it probably because there was very little gore in comparison to other slasher movies. The kills lacked creativity for the most part and while still violent, this movie does nothing new or even impressive.
The huge lag between the first set of killings and the second was way too long, and looking around the theater at times, I could tell I was not the only one who was bored. The director was probably trying to establish a story for the characters, but the fact of the matter is that the story was not interesting. I’d much rather see heads roll when I’m watching a horror movie than watch some people play beer pong, smoke weed and have sex.
People get killed off rather quickly after the long, boring middle. In the final stand against Jason, they overcome him and put an end to all the horror. Or so they think. They throw his dead body into Crystal Lake and breathe a sigh of relief. But as every good Jason fan knows, Jason never dies.