Friday The 13th (Marcus Nispel, 2009)

By Sarah Wharton

This post is a remake/reimagining/reboot.

I think you know a film’s in trouble when it requires 23 minutes worth of prologue (out of a 97 minute running time) before the title comes up. Well, actually, it’s two prologues. Stay with me now…

In the first few minutes an obnoxious teenage girl beheads Mrs Voorhees who, it would seem has killed all of her obnoxious teenage friends. “Whoa!” I hear you cry, “The decapitation of Mrs Voorhees is at the end of the original Friday The 13th, not the beginning!” And you would be right. Y’know, what with her being the killer in that film and all. However, Marcus Nispel has tried to do something original (yes, I am being sarcastic) by not remaking Friday The 13th but instead stealing the best bits from the original film and the first three sequels and sticking them together in one film.

Anyway, I digress. The following 15-20 minutes sees a group of five obnoxious teenagers get killed by Jason Voorhees who’s a bit pissed after seeing his good ol’ mom bite the big one. The fact that he’s meant to be dead – the whole reason for her, you know, avenging him in the first place – seems to have escaped his attention. The last girl to be dispatched (or is she?) from this group is Whitney (Amanda Righetti) who bears an uncanny resemblence to Mummy Jason. Has Jason killed her or did he just want a cuddle? We’re robbed of that intriguing knowledge by the title coming up. At this point someone in the cinema complained loudly that it was only just starting: “I was hoping it was nearly finished!” No such luck.

We then meet a slightly bigger group of obnoxious teenagers (theme?) the only one of whom is remotely likeable is Jenna (Danielle Panabaker of Sky High). We also meet Clay (Jared Padalecki), Whitney’s brother who’s come to Crystal Lake in search of her. Clay and Jenna team up to look for her while Jason kills pretty much everyone that moves. That’s about it.

While the original Friday The 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980) was hardly a work of art it had two very distinct things going for it: a likeable cast of characters and inventive deaths. The rehash has neither. With the exception of Jenna and, to an extent Clay, it’s impossible to care about anyone. Whitney doesn’t get enough screentime to make us care and everyone else is an annoying variety of stereotypes. Nispel seems to have lost whatever genius he used to make the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) remake half-decent. This is problematic. The deaths are a variety of stabbings and that’s about it. Now, if I cared about the characters, this would be enough, but since I don’t then I at least want spectacular death scenes. The original did both. The remake does neither. The one time Nispel musters any originality is killing Jenna  moments before the end leaving Clay and Whitney to face the finale. Unfortunately this also kills off the most likeable character in the film meaning that the finale becomes another tedious 10 minutes in which the audience is expected to care that some girl they don’t know is left to defeat Jason.

The lack of anyone to root for in the finale leaves the audience with only one real option. Even I found myself idly thinking, “Go Jason! Kill those boring idiots with the wood chipper so I can go home.” However, unlike Jigsaw or Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees has all the personality of a wet sock. A wet sock with a machete, admittedly, but a wet sock nonetheless. This leaves it fairly hard to root for him too.

Friday The 13th is a very poor film, even by current horror remake standards. It has nothing to say and even seems to be aware of this itself. It’ll be interesting to compare it to the forthcoming remake of The Last House on the Left (Denis Iliadis, 2009) which has the involvement of its original makers and is getting some excellent advance reviews.

Watch this space…