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You know, it's funny... all this hate over a Friday the 13th remake, and I don't quite understand why. A few reasons, really...

While it didn't invent the slasher by any means, Friday the 13th (1980) kick-started the genre somethin' fierce. More than eighty slashers within the next year? That's pretty crazy. We didnn't see that many Saw rip-offs before Saw II. Any, that's not really what I'm trying to say. This is:

Friday the 13th has been remade absolutely no less than twice. The first two sequels followed the same exact series of events in the same exact order and you could predict the shameful rehash endings coming the first time you saw them.

The second film is really quite boring for the first hour, and I'd honestly rather have quick cutting in the series to make it somewhat energetic than have long, pointless scenes of cardboard characters talking in poorly-framed static shots. For all this hate over "A music video director," at the helm of the remake, that's the kind of filmmaker who has the skill and tenacity to make time move faster, which is exactly what many of the series entries don't have. I object to the use of flash cutting and action choreography in films like the Hitcher remake, because it's totally unsuited to the concept (as were the changes made to the script). The Friday series, though, needs some re-energizing. I have faith in the director, especially with some of the stills that have been shown. It appears as if actual care is being given to dynamic cinematography, which the series has always been sorely lacking in.

Friday the 13th Part 3, often cited as the series' finest hour, is abysmal for me, and no matter how bad the remake turns out to be, Friday the 13th Part 3 will always be the worst in my eyes. 

No less than two or three kills are stolen directly from Part 1, with the shining example being Kevin Bacon's. In the first film, a 50-year-old woman holds a man's head down and shoves an arrow through a mattress, up through the back of his neck and out the front of his throat.

In the third film, the hulking Jason grabs a woman's head and puts a machete through a hammock. It's not excessive to show how much more hardcore the series has gotten; it's just moronic. It's shameless, and the film is filled with the same characters with the same scripts as the first two. 

Not only that, it holds the title of Worst Jason. Contrary to what many say, it does matter who plays the role. Comparing Richard Brooker's performance to pretty much any other actor who's played Jason is like comparing an old, beat up '89 Chevy to a sleek '57 Ferrarri. Watch Brooker walk, is all I'm saying. As he's walking down steps, he's watching his feet to make sure he's not tripping. As he's reaching his arms up cause You Thought He Was Dead, he simply doesn't inspire fear.

Kane "The Man" Hodder can walk and move in the costume without showing a single shred of imperfection. In fact, he talks about a cut scene from Part VII, glad it was cut, because he makes an odd, almost unnoticeable motion when he slams a woman into a tree. This mild imperfection that would have haunted Hodder for a long time is par for the course in Brooker's aimless, confused motion. Maybe Brooker wasn't always so poor, but even comparing him to Part VI's CJ Graham or Part 2's Warrington Gillette is no contest. Jason in Part 2 often gave me chills with his movements alone, and Brooker failed. That's all.

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The series went on for many years, sometimes evolving, sometimes back-stepping, but usually entertaining. Back on the subject of the remake, I'm glad it's being done. If any of the 70s or 80s horror classics were gonna be redone, it should've been this one. Like I said, it's been point-for-point remade and rehashed even within its own series, and most people love Parts 2 and 3. I don't hold that against them, but I haven't seen or heard a single thing about the upcoming film that's weakened my excitement for it. In fact, the word that they're mainly combining the first three films is the best news I've heard about it... because by the time there are more than a few deaths in the second and third entries, I'm bored to tears. They SHOULD be combined into one slightly longer, much quicker film, and that's exactly what's being done.

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On another note, some of you may have been lucky enough to catch that leaked Comic-Con footage of the teaser trailer before it was pulled. I'm a member of a horror site mostly populated by older fans, who generally show distress or worry about upcoming remakes. I've been silently tracking their viewpoints on Friday the 13th (2009), and not a lot of it has been hopeful. In fact, some felt like the folks behind it were treading on some sort of hallowed, sacred ground, as if all of them consider every Friday movie a cinematic masterwork.

When that teaser hit, they all sang different tune. I could feel their real, palpable love dripping onto their keyboards as they exclaimed how they had watched that shaky, grainy footage 30 times in one day. I began to think that in today's world of excess, maybe it's not that audiences are harder to please, but that today's horror isn't hitting the right notes with fans. Maybe you just need to put a ki-ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma-ma in the trailer and people will applaud. Maybe that's what kept the series popular year after year, even in its dry spells. Maybe not so much has changed beyond the way films are being marketed nowadays.

Whatever the case, I'll be there at midnight, the Friday after Watchmen.

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