My Review of Friday The 13th (2009)

 

Written by Damien Shannon And Mark Swift

Directed by Marcus Nispel

Whitney: "Jason, say hi to Mommy ... in hell."

After eleven movies and an unrelated TV series co-opting the franchise name, where else could this franchise go? Of course, it was time for a remake.

Like both Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street, while this would be a financially smart thing to do, quality wise, this ain't good. It ain't good at all. In fact, it's a fucking stinker of a remake.

I mean it tried it's danmdest to do something interesting by not being a cut and paste job of the original movie and it still dropped the ball. The movie opened with a younger Jason Voorhees (Caleb Guess) witnessing the beheading of his mother, Pamela (Nana Visitor). Then we jump to thirty years later.

In that time, more unruly young adults rock up at Crystal Lake, having sex with each other and trying to score weed. Jason (Derek Meats) dispatched of all, except one girl named Whitney (Amanda Righetti) and all because she bore a passing resemblance to Jason's mother.

However it's not Whitney who's our main protagonist but her brother, Clay Miller (Jared Padalecki)  who ventured into Crystal Lake to find his sister. He's mostly helped by the rather competent Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) while incurring the wrath of Jenna's conceited boyfriend, Trent (Travis Van Winkle).

The rest of the film follows the usual pattern. Brother and sister are reunited, second group of campers are cannon fodder, Jason gets creative with his kids and the ending has a throwback to the original movie. It just goes through the motions. 

- A sequel was originally planned for 2010 but got cancelled. Now we're getting a streaming show based on Crystal Lake as a prequel.

- This movie does seem to cherry pick elements from the sequels as well, just not very well.

- Even test audiences thought this movie went overboard with the sex scenes. 

- Chronology: I'm assuming 2009 for the majority of the movie to line up with it's release date.

Friday The 13th is a truly horrible excuse for a remake and not even Jared Padalecki as a likeable protagonist can salvage it. As a whole, this franchise really did fall apart from 1989 onwards. I hope one day it can get the revival it deserves.

Rating: 4 out of 10