‘Friday the 13th’ remake slashes way onto screen

"Friday the 13th" -- 2 out of 5 stars

Ty Hampton
Critic’s Corner

The classic 24-hour nightmare of terror hits the big screen again in Producer Michael Bay’s newest rendition of the famed 1980 slasher film “Friday the 13th”.

The blood is redder, the teen victims are dumber, and the villain Jason seems to event newer ways of killing people all in a film that seems to offer nothing new – a common shortfall of remakes. Some accomplish a new modern day adaptation with added stylish flare and others just stick to the same old tricks that made the initial film a hit.

The original Friday the 13th hangs up there in an elite 70s and 80s horror class with the likes of films “Halloween”, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, and “Nightmare on Elm Street” – so there’s a reason this was destined to be a remake as the ladder have already received the same treatment or are in the works now.

This adaptation starts with a group of teenagers embarking on a camping trip in the woods where a psychopath and her deformed son, Jason, were said to have slain the staff of entire summer camp at Camp Crystal Lake. Thing is, the son who was thought to be dead is back and on a rampage with out-of-town campers turning up missing left and right.

Jason mows through the first bunch of campers in record time and fashion, making up about a 20-minute introduction to the film before the title shot is shown. Then the primary group of frat boys and ditsy girls show up to stay at their parents cabin on the lake and they one by one befall Jason’s new campaign of terror.

Downgrades: Typical of slasher flicks, the actors in this movie are complete unknowns but they seem increasingly more ridiculous and unlikable than in the past as I found myself (on more than one occasion) rooting for Jason more than the victim in peril. To make it worse they through in a stoner twist to this version.

Plus, a number of moments in the film are beyond poor acting and just ridiculously cheesy – which would be a common complaint of mine for the entire slasher/horror genre. It’s the opposite of engaging and likewise invokes little empathy from the audience to care about the film’s subjects.

Improvements: Jason is not a walking vegetable and can actually run and pursue fleeing victims like the vicious killer he is. If you remember the classic Jason of old just slowly walked basically wherever he went – ala Michael Myers in “Halloween.”

Additionally, although the film lost its classic film imagery it did gain some clean, glossy modern veneer that Michael Bay seems to put on all his films these days and it seemed to only bring out the effectiveness of the gore and sound effects even more. After all, that’s partly why people come to see these movies.

Producer Michael Bay is known for as many colossal hits (”Transformers”, “The Rock” and “Armageddon”) as he is for sub-par misses (”The Island”, “Pearl Harbor”, and “The Hitcher”), and this latest effort leans toward the miss category in my book.

In 2003 Bay teamed up with German director Marcus Nispel -- who also made this film -- for his first classic horror remake “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. That is a creepy tale that Nispel and Bay brought an extra angle to by making the villain as evil as it gets and the entire town is out to help him – very well done I thought.

It appears the duo tried to accomplish the same thing in this attempt by using the same old playbook and following the original too much. Although I am happy that this film turned out to be a lot more like the chainsaw thriller than the 2003 blaspheme bomb “Freddy vs. Jason”.

Regardless of what you think of Bay’s films, the man certainly is busy, as the Bay produced “The Unborn” is in theaters now with “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” due this summer, and his adaptation of “Nightmare on Elm Street” slated for 2010.

Overall I found this film to be a lowbrow, but entertaining bloodbath but I wouldn’t give it much more credit for anything than that. Horror movies can be made with suspense, intelligence, and stylistic skill and this really lacked any of the fore mentioned attributes.

I give it 2 out of 5 stars for the horror genre and add a parental disclaimer that there is a good deal of nudity and sexual content in this version.

The film is rated “R” for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, language and drug material. It is showing at 4, 7, and 9 p.m. nightly through Feb. 26 at the Entertainer Cinema in Ronan.