Friday the Thirteenth
February 15th 2009 04:42
Friday the Thirteenth, 2009
You know how I feel about slasher flicks. Until I understood their motivation, I couldn't get into them, but now that I do, I've started to really enjoy them. (This is a shock, mostly to me.) I read a few reviews from other folks on the web about their issues with this rebooting of the Jason mythology, and the ones that found it disappointing can bite my butt.
Our story takes place twenty-something years after the original tale, and we are even given a brief glance into the origin. Five young twenty-somethings are heading out into the woods near Crystal Lake to find something... illicit, shall we say. I will warn you now, these are not the droids we're looking for: this whole first segment is just the warm-up.
At least one other reviewer has said that the movie blew it's whole "scary massacre" budget in the first ten minutes. I beg to differ. I think that if they had maintained this particular level of hack-and-slash for the whole hour-and-a-half, it would have gotten boring and monotonous. I will say this about Jason Vor Hees, though: he's gotten downright creative in his methods of culling the genetic herd.
There are some plot points and archetype elements that don't make a lot of sense, but it sticks with the spirit of the genre really well. Additionally, I thought the writers did an excellent job of making the characters sympathetic, witty and even clever without anyone being overwhelmingly smarmy. Sure, from the beginning you can peg most of who is going to die (especially if you've seen my all-time favorite, Behind the Mask), but there were a few surprises in there. The fight scenes are not artificially drawn-out (thankgod), and the ending is... well, you're just going to have to see it.
Sure, it would have been better to see it yesterday (the actual Friday the 13th), but I had a bad case of leave-me-alone-I'm-writing.
This reboot of the 1980 classic gets 4 stars. That's not bad for a slasher flick.
4 Stars
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