Friday the 13th

You know what… the beginning really isn't that bad.

Like all recent horror duds, this film opens with a string of characters, defined very well by their various clichés- the geek who doesn’t get any, the sex-crazed couple, the good girl, the sensitive hero- but then things start to heat up, fast.

At the risk of ruining what little fun this film offers, let me just say that by the time the title card pulsed onto the screen, I was impressed.
Of course it all goes to shit pretty quickly, but what the hell, if you’ve paid the price of admission you know what to expect.

Not exactly a remake of the original Friday the 13th, which was a cheesy B-movie knockoff of Hitchcock’s Psycho, this “remodeling” of the franchise combines aspects from the first three Jason Voorhees films.

But lets talk about something bigger… when did horror films start producing so much crap? People go to these films to escape from their lives and be given a taste of something eccentric. I get that. But lately, this genre is dead. Did you see Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later? How about The Descent, in which five women stuck in a cave discover some very bad things. Both are brilliantly bold ventures into a genre that we’ve seen hundreds of times, yet they both manage to pull it off with thrills and smarts.

The problem with the new Friday the 13th's, the Halloween's, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre's, the Prom Night's, as well as the Saw's, the Hostel's and the other massive loads of film garbage out there is that they all lack the same quality… originality.

But maybe I’m thinking too much into it. The first weekend box office take of this Friday the 13th grossed more than the Best Picture nominated The Reader and Frost/Nixon… combined. Given those numbers, I imagine you can expect much more of Jason and company very soon. D+