When I heard they were releasing a remake of the eighties slasher staple Friday The 13th I wasn’t completely against it. Friday the 13th is clearly a touchstone of horror movie history and Jason is one of the poster boys for fans of the genre. Yet if we were completely honest Friday The 13th was never on the same level as classics like Dawn of The Dead or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This didn’t feel like blasphemy to me. I was certainly less skeptical of a remake for this franchise than the remake for Nightmare on Elm Street that is in the works. So when I brought it home and popped it in the player I was hopeful for a fun, popcorn horror evening with Jason being reinvented for a new generation.

I definitely got exactly that.

This doesn’t mean the new Friday The 13th is really all that good though. In fact, I would say it’s the least ambitious of all the remakes I can think of currently. It ranks much better than the butchering of Black Christmas or Prom Night but isn’t nearly as innovative as Rob Zombie’s vision in Halloween (although that film has some definite flaws) or brought to modern day as well as the newer Dawn of The Dead.

The story is more along the lines of Friday The 13th Part II than the original. We join the story after Jason’s mom is dispatched by a counselor who survived the first round of death at Crystal Lake. Then we join up with four young adults who are searching for a crop of marijuana that was planted in the forest. They unwittingly wander into Jason’s domain. He immediately lets them know how he feels about their trespassing. All four meet their grisly end. We fast forward three months later when another group of young adults are going to some rich guys house to party for the weekend. We also are introduced to a young man who is looking for his sister who disappeared in the area. As the evening progresses the fate of this stranger on a motorcycle and the group intersect.
 
Let’s start with the things the remake does well. The set design for this film is fantastic. Creepy, interesting and unsettling I thought it was a huge improvement over the original layout of Camp Crystal Lake. The set gives Jason a lot more personality which he never really had. Jason was always high on the lethality but low on the charisma. The most effective moments of this reboot occur when the victims are in his domain. Jason also gets a couple of upgrades. First of all he can move a lot faster now. I’m not sure how I feel about it though. The defining characteristic of Jason has always been you could run like Flo-Jo and he could walk like he was on a nature trail and he still would find you. So to see him move fast was strange for someone who grew up with him in the eighties. Yet, there is one scene where he charges a helpless victim and the speed definitely makes him far more intimidating. These two things make him seem more human than supernatural demon. He’s kind of like a psychotic version of the guy on Man vs. Wild or something.

The elements that are definitely lacking are the same ones that are lacking in many of the other installments. The plot is nothing innovative, most of the characters are stereotypes written for the sole purpose of carnage and the dialogue is laughable. There is one line in this film I was highly considering making the title of this review but decided not to spoil it. Inadvertently it turns out to be a highly entertaining and completely sleazy highlight of the film. There is definitely a lot of pro-drug use, blatant and highly gratuitous sex and violence. Yet, if you go into a Friday The 13th film expecting anything different your probably not much smarter than the characters.

Overall, this is definitely worth a rental only for me and probably once at that. While I had a couple of good laughs, a couple of good jump scares and a select few suspenseful moments there are many movies I want to see before I would ever go back to this one. I probably will rent the second one though because I think there is still some potential as Jason does seem a bit more menacing in some ways and the set design could be used by more innovative directors in the future. We’ll see.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age