"Friday the 13th" review

Friday the 13th (2009)

Director: Marcus Nispel
Writers: Damian Shannon Mark Swift

Jared Padalecki ... Clay Miller
Danielle Panabaker ... Jenna
Amanda Righetti ... Whitney Miller
Travis Van Winkle ... Trent
Aaron Yoo ... Chewie
Derek Mears ... Jason Voorhees
Julianna Guill ... Bree
Willa Ford ... Chelsea
America Olivo ... Amanda

A bunch of college students head to Camp Crystal Lake to do drugs, get laid and commit other sins that disturb the resident psychopathic monster Jason. A brother of one of the doomed partygoer's heads to the lake to find his sister after her encounter with the madman. A new batch of kids lands at the lake only to find their party disrupted by a hockey masked killing machine. Voorhees finds fresh meat has been left at his door and stalks them with ruthless efficiency. Jason will not rest until he slashes his way through every human who dares to annoy him by being alive in his presence.

"Friday the 13th" was about what I expected. It followed all of the slasher movie rules. There were topless women getting hacked, dealing in weed led to instant death and basically anyone caught breathing near Jason was marked for extermination. But while the kills were plentiful, they were lacking in ghoulish imagination. Other than the girl being roasted in her sleeping bag, the rest of Jason's slaughter felt like a retread of his greatest hits. His machete got a workout but after the third skull was split open it got a little tiresome.

Still, it's nice to see that the filmmakers at least tried to make this sequel scary. Jason had been turning into a joke over the years and he needed to get back to his sleazy slasher roots. I also liked the fact that they ran Jason through all of the stages of his 80's slasher style. He shows up as a boy in the beginning, (Part 1), segues into his bag over the head look, (Part 2) and then finally settles on his beloved hockey mask, (Part 3 through infinity). Jason dispatched these college kids with his usual workmanlike blood lust and bodies were eradicated in a timely manner.

Although you'd think that Jason's coming home party to Camp Crystal Lake would be a little more over the top. "Friday the 13th" ran through the slasher movie motions and delivered the bare minium of what was expected of it. But even though some more thought could have been put into the violent scenes, I still had a good time watching Jason run wild through the woods. The filmmakers have hit the reset button on Voorhees so a new generation can have nightmares over this maniacal boogeyman. Sounds like fun to me.

SCORE: 3 out of 4 Voorhees