Friday the 13th (2009)
Directed By: Marcus Nispel
Starring: Jared Padelecki, Danielle Panabaker, Travis Van Winkle, Amanda RIghetti, Aaron Yoo, America Olivo, Derrick Mears
Subgenre: Slasher
Synopsis: One of the most popular horror franchises gets the reboot treatment in this reintroduction to Jason Voorhees. The basic storyline is a very familiar one for Camp Crystal Lake. Teens go camping. Teens drink, do drugs, and have sex. Teens die. There is a brief introduction with the first group of teens meeting a very cranky Jason while in search of a mythical marijuana field. We are soon introduced to a second group heading to a lake cabin for a weekend of debauchery and the requisite loner on a motorcycle looking for his sister that recently disappeared.
Thoughts: I admittedly have a soft spot for the F13 series. I know most of them are garbage, but I have a helluva good time watching them just about every time. I am generally leery of remakes, and the new version of Jason was no different. I failed to check it out in theatres, as the trailers never really did much for me, so I wasn’t expecting a lot going into the movie.
While I was not blown away, I did like some of the things they did. Jason was quicker and more cunning than in previous movies. He set traps and often outsmarted his victims instead of chasing them at a methodical pace waiting for them to fall down. His “look” was great as well and I thought that Derrick Mears did a fantastic job bringing Jason to life. I would rank him as my 2nd favorite Jason, behind the work of Kane Hodder.
I also thought that the carnage was perfect. The kills were well choreographed and were reminiscent of the earlier movies in their use of cutaways and execution.
I did think the pacing of the film was off a bit and it was too long. I did watch the extended version and need to check out the theatrical version to compare them, so maybe that will help a lot. In the extended version, the finale took way too long as they were running back and forth trying to get away from Jason.
Friday the 13th should satiate slasher fans, but in the end, it didn’t really bring anything new to the genre. It fits into the Friday the 13th pantheon well, and did an amicable job of rebooting the franchise, but the biggest question I have is when will we see Jason back in space?
Cenobite Me 
This one had me until the last few seconds. Absolutely stupid. I know they couldn’t really kill Jason, but they needed a better ending than that one. I would have preferred them recreating the boat scene from the original. I loved the idea of humanizing Jason a little more and seeing his underground network of tunnels. man…..just those last few seconds……