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The Friday the 13th franchise has a long and storied history, with eleven films over nearly thirty years. The last three in the series (Jason Goes to Hell, Jason X, and Freddy vs. Jason) eschewed the Friday the 13th moniker altogether, and FvJ even went so far as to lampoon some of the more mindless aspects of the previous entries. Which is why it is depressing that a franchise that had seemed to be making some small strides towards becoming progressive has taken such gigantic step backward with this fresh cup of piss thrown in horror fans’ collective faces. Right off the bat you might be wondering, as I was, why a huge, hulking, hockey-masked Jason Voorhees would be the protagonist of a Friday the 13th remake.It is no spoiler to say that Jason was not the killer in the original film...
| ... and the goddamn hockey mask didn’t settle on his misshapen face until the third entry. Well, the answer to the conundrum is that this new Friday the 13 is not a remake. Not even a little bit. I mean, the opening of the film is a (lame) recreation of the end of the original film, complete with Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer here replaced by someone credited as “Nana Visitor” – yeah, not a sobriquet at all) getting her famous mortal disconnect. | 
Come meet the new boss -- same as the old boss. |
Then the second beginning happens, and we get what seems to be a quick remake of the second film. Horny teenagers stumble upon Jason’s old stomping grounds, and get killed in imaginative ways. Except this time around there is a lot less imagination. There is also a suspiciously striking resemblance to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Several good-looking twenty-somethings are on a quest to make some money selling pot, and are divided and conquered by a mute and bloodthirsty man-child maniac. The resemblance makes more sense, and becomes even more saddening, when you realize that this film was directed by Marcus Nispel, who also helmed the TCM redux. Just like in the second F13, this segment culminates in the finding of Mama Voorhees’ severed head, and the extermination of all but one of the moron kids. 
Nasty water, or death by Jason... | At this point, about twenty minutes into the film, they finally slap the uninspired title card up on the screen, and begin the actual uninspired movie. What follows is just an amalgamation of the events from the rest of the F13 franchise, as well as a heaping helping of stolen moments from a host of other films. There is the deformed killer dumping the body of a friend on the ground in front of a hiding, terrified boy and girl (Wrong Turn), a girl being impaled on antlers (Silent Night, Deadly Night), and others. But mostly it is just the regulation “Frat boys and their bleached-blonde mattresses drive to secluded house in the woods to be killed” scenario. I guess that in light of the whitewashed substrate of most horror films, having a black guy and an Asian guy in the mix make this movie seem like a Benetton ad. |
Now just add the guilty-feeling brother out looking for his missing sister into the mix. Said sister is the survivor from the earlier segment, and is being held by Jason in his basement, ala Stretch in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Never mind the fact that she has been locked in chains for six weeks, but somehow her hair isn’t ratty, her lips aren’t cracked and peeling, and she isn’t covered in a clotty layer of her own shit and piss. But that is the least of our verisimilitude worries in this film, as the new batch of retards are divided and conquered in the anticipated horror film déjà vu way: Some chicks get naked, the minorities crack clever jokes, and Jason stalks and kills very toned and athletic college kids like he was plucking a rattle from a baby stroller. | Oh, did I mention that not only is Jason not the silent, lumbering, frightening character of yore but a fucking short-distance sprinter now? He also possesses the ability to shoot an arrow through your head from fifty yards away, even though his eyes are mismatched both in terms of size and placement, due to his congenital cranial deformity. I’m not sure what is more supernatural in the F13 films: Jason himself, or the magical feats he can perform with a machete. Seriously. He can thrust it downward precisely between two pier boards cleanly into a girl’s skull, and yank it right back out, just as cleanly? Sure. | 
She's in it, gets fucked from behind... still not worth it. |
But I digress. The new Friday the 13th, which is only called a remake because that frees them from having to be creative in their method of bringing Jason back for another run, is tedious and stupid, and lacks even one single reason for watching it. It picks out any possible subtext, imagination and creativity from the previous entries like seeds from cotton, and discards the cotton for the seeds. I would quite literally rather have a root canal than sit through this shitfest ever again. Avoid it at all costs. Really. Go see Bride Wars or Confessions of a Shopaholic instead. It’s that bad.
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