Movie Review: A Revisit to a Replacement

February 16, 2009 by Andy Vogel

Horror in movies has been a cash cow for Hollywood to slaughter ever since gore sparked way up during the 1980s. Michael Bay’s version of Friday the 13th opened up on (you guessed it) Friday the 13th this past weekend.

Now let’s take a second and look back on this franchises track run.

Most of the Friday the 13th movies star the pop culture icon Jason Voorhees. A silent unstoppable killer, that slaughters in everything in his path. It all started the 1980s. The plot is about a deformed boy who drowned and comes back to avenge his mother who was avenging him and blah blah blah. Basically the formula goes like murder, murder, kill, kill.

So after more than 30 years of bad sequels, with one including another washed out horror icon, Freddy Krueger, Jason slashes the screens again. This time super effects wiz Michael Bay jumps on board to run this meat train.

It was exciting to hear Bay was going to be a part of this project. The man does know how to make the end of the world look amazing. He does a good job of blowing crap up like in Transformers or Armageddon.

Unfortunately, just like in Transformers, Michael Bay is clueless on creating plots and characters. But that excusable for this movie because everybody already has an understanding of whom Jason is, just a guy with a hockey mask and a machete that kills.

So there are high hopes for this movie. Last year, Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween was impressive with a unique twist of character development. So Bay is fit to do the same, right? He did help out with the new versions of the Texas Chainsaws and those were decent renditions.

Bay’s version of Friday of the 13th is what it is. A 2009 version of the first 3 films rolled up into one clean cut horror fest. Jason is redone in the same getup and the theme is unchanged. The executions are surprising not as graphic as imagined.

The story starts with kids backpacking on Jason grounds, Camp Crystal Lake. They all end up “missing.” 6 weeks later, a brother of one the missing starts search for them. Along the way he runs into another group of campers and that’s where the body count rises and rises. It very briefly touches on Jason’s background with his psychotic mother. Yet, it still a Bay film, you get no satisfaction.

What tanks this flick is the dull characters. There way too broad and flat. Flat as in just a bunch of bubbly plastic women and American eagle outfitted muscles heads getting chopped into bits. As stated before, this isn’t anything new for a Bay flick. Yet, Bay focuses on the victims more than he does Jason which makes the film a drag.

Only improvement is that the campy chessyness of the previous films is lacking. Yet, maybe that’s what this gunk of a film needed. A bunch of lame effects would have complemented this laughable script.

What is more interesting than the film itself, is the popularity it receives. On opening day, theaters were being crammed of teenagers till 1 in the morning. No matter how many times people have witnessed Jason, Leatherface, Michael, or Freddy, a new generation of youth ready to see more and more.

I was hoping Hollywood would churn out more boogie men by now so we wouldn’t have to revisit the same plot again and again. But, these guys are in high demand. There not going anywhere for a long time. There is even talk of a new Chucky movie coming out next year.

This makes it look like Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman won’t need to come out of retirement anytime soon, even thought it might save us.