(Should‘ve just gone to Maui, kids…)
CAST: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Pannabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle, Aaron Yoo, Arlen Escarpeta, Julianne Guill, Willa Ford, Ryan Hansen, Derek Mears, Jonathan Sadowski, Nana Visitor.
DIRECTOR: Marcus Nispel
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and one really pissed-off hockey mask-wearing psycho redneck hillbilly with a very, very sharp machete - straight ahead…
IT’S LIKE THIS: Camp Crystal Lake was the scene of a brutal massacre perpetrated by a wacko named Mrs. Voorhees (Nana Visitor) back in 1980. Fortunately, a lone survivor decapitate the bitch and escaped. Unfortunately, Mrs. Voorhees had a bizarre son named Jason (Derek Mears) who saw his mother beheaded - and swore revenge on anyone who trespasses on Crystal Lake. Flash forward a couple dozen years later or so, and a bunch of dimwit college students decide to spend a nice weekend relaxing at… Crystal Lake. You don’t have to be a Mensa candidate to figure out they should’ve just stayed in the city. Hope they cancelled any future appointments because they won’t be keeping them. Cue the screaming…
THE DUDE (OR DUDETTE) MOST LIKELY TO SAVE THE DAY: Clay Miller (Jared Padelecki), nice guy dude who is searching for his missing sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti) who‘s being held captive by Jason. Jenna (Danielle Pannabaker) is also pretty smart and resourceful. Besides these three, everyone else is pretty much useless.
EYE CANDY MOST LIKELY TO FIRE UP A WOODY: Jared Padalecki is pretty cute, and so are Travis Van Winkle and Ryan Hansen as two of the other dudes. But again, this award goes to the ladies: Danielle Pannabaker and - especially - Amanda Righetti are pretty fetchin’. Besides, all the guys in this movie seem to share the same haircut that makes them all look like overgrown Justin Biebers. What the hell?
MOST INTENTIONALLY SCARY SCENE: Clay and Jenna diving into Jason’s subterranean lair to rescue Whitney.
MOST UNINTENTIONALLY SCARY SCENE: Trent (Van Winkle) screaming like a little biyatch when Jason surprises him with a falling corpse. Actually, more like unintentionally hilarious.
HOTTEST SCENE: You get the usual horny-college-students-fucking number, but that isn’t so much hot as expected. Nope… Hottest Scene goes to Whitney putting the beatdown on Jason at the end.
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: Who will survive? Clay? Jenna? Whitney? Trent? Any of the others? Or will Jason pretty much make mincemeat of them all? My money’s on the guy in the hockey mask, yo!
WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH “FRIDAY THE 13TH”: If you don’t mind remakes/reimagining to classic slashers.
WHY YOU MAY NOT ENJOY “FRIDAY THE 13TH”: If you don’t like classic slashers and their remakes/reimaginings. If so, steer clear…
BUT, SERIOUSLY: In the wake of HALLOWEEN’s stunning success in 1978, a whole slew of slashers went into production and subsequently flooded movie theatres. The most successful of the HALLOWEEN clones was FRIDAY THE 13th. Made for next to nothing (just like HALLOWEEN), FRIDAY THE 13th grossed over $35 million at the North American box office. Endless sequels soon followed, eventually petering out with the absymal JASON X in 2002.
With the recent slew of classic slasher remakes that saw new versions of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN, PROM NIGHT, BLACK CHRISTMAS, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE, it was only a matter of time before FRIDAY THE 13th would get the same treatment. With TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake director Marcus Nispel at the helm, things looked promising. TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was one of the best remakes, and hopes were high for Nispel to work him same magic with FRIDAY THE 13th.
Is the FRIDAY THE 13th remake as good or better than the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake? No on both counts. That doesn’t mean the former is bad, though. Just not as strong and visceral as the latter. Nispel brings some of the same grit and intensity to this film as he did to the other one, mainly in the first act. The whole early sequence showing Whitney and her friends’ ill-fated camping trip hums with dread and danger, and seems to promise us a more intense film than we ultimately get.
Once the main cast of characters are introduced in the second act, the film sort of levels out as we get the usual party-animal stereotypes. While Jared Padalecki makes for a good hero that we can root for, he is only joined by Danielle Pannabaker and Amanda Righetti in giving us characters that we can identify with. Everyone else is just a vapid or unlikable cliché. They may bring us occasional flashes of humor, but in the end it’s not sufficient for us to be concerned for their survival. Comparatively, we were more concerned to the fates of the characters in the original film.
Another problem is the rather weak ending. The chase scenes leading up to it are fine, but the original FRIDAY THE 13th had a whopper of a final confrontation, followed by a humdinger of twist ending that had audiences literally jumping out of their seats with fright. The remake recreates much of the tense final battle, but seriously fumbles the last-minute twist. It actually had us laughing instead. Shame.
All in all, FRIDAY THE 13TH is a solid remake/reimagining that combines elements from the first 3 FRIDAY movies. It also has nice performances from Padalecki, Pannabaker, and Righetti to keep it afloat, as well as a tense first and third act. Had the makers been able to make the rest of the cast as likable as the lead trio, and punched up that second act and final twist, we might have had a stronger movie. As it is, it is merely average for a remake.
