When Marcus Nispel resurrected the Friday the 13th saga, it wasn’t immediately clear how much distance he was keeping between his new film and the old series. Even after years of wretched sequels mixed with good ones, the 2009 refresher still feels far too stale. Nispel fought hard to “forget” everything after Part II but in doing so lost the ability to gauge what’s new and different for the series. Jason may be leaner, the style sharper and more visceral, and the teenagers as stupid as ever, but this time Jason’s rebirth has more than its fair share of complications.
To its credit, Friday the 13th leaps into action right from the start. Instead of the introduction period which helped build up the original or slow down the second, this time the nudity and streams of blood come with a pleasing immediacy. Whitney (Amanda Righetti), Wade (Jonathan Sadowski), Richie (Ben Feldman), Mike (Nick Mennell) and Amanda (America Olivo) take a stroll through the woods searching for a place to camp (and some pot) but instead stumble across a boarded up camp bearing the name Crystal Lake. Just as people are getting ready to sex or smoke up, Jason strikes leaving everyone dead and Whitney in her final moments as the opening title rolls.
Flash forward a few years and a new band of spoilt teenagers head into the woods for a weekend of merrymaking. Whereas the opening camp was just a batch of dispensable suburbanites, this new crew is comprised of dispensable stereotypes. First you have the self-absorbed jock Trent (Travis Van Winkle), his girlfriend Jenna (Danielle Panabaker), the slutty cheerleader-type Bree (Julianna Gill), the token black guy Lawrence (Arlen Escarpeta), the zany Asian kid Chewie (Aaron Yoo), the beach-blond slacker (Ryan Hansen) and the new guy Clay (Jared Padalecki) who joins up with them as he searches for his missing sister, Whitney. Wouldn’t you know it? Trent’s summer home is adjacent to that place where dreams are slashed to ribbons: Crystal Lake. As people go off on their own, the body count rises until the entire escapade becomes little more than a flimsy excuse for a slasher film.
The kicker here is that as Jason Voorhees, Derek Mears carries himself well underneath the prosthetic abs and malformed head. The problem is never with the believability of him as Jason – he’s fine. The problem is with the kids, but then, isn’t it always? The use of the stereotypical teen sampling feels far too much like the generic garbage that Hollywood has been churning out ever since they realized that teens swarm to anything that gives them an excuse to hold each other tight in a dark room. In contrast, like the best installments of Friday the 13th, the film benefits from a small infusion of plot. Instead of simply saying ‘kids encounter deranged monster-man at an abandoned summer camp’, they’ve at least given us a character like Clay to give the movie some magnitude (a teensy amount).
The kills of Friday the 13th disappoint on a grand scale. Even the death of Trent, which director Nispel touts as one of the best in the film, sucks. It simply sucks. They used the very clichéd tactic of giving us a jock-character whom we want to see die – and Nispel builds his douche-factor to incredible heights – so that when his death finally comes we cheer. But we don’t cheer. Because his death isn’t momentous. It’s quite plain and bland. Impaling a man has long since failed to strike the horror-film lover as clever. It may be classic, but rarely clever. I wish that only Trent’s death disappointed – but each and every one is its own embarrassment to the movie. If there was any doubt before watching the film about Nispel’s aptitude for directing a horror franchise – creating such uninspired deaths within an entirely tiresome horror reboot should do the trick.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
There’s actually a good amount to be found on the disc along with a digital copy of the film for your iPod enjoyment. Exclusive to the Blu-ray edition are a few little features on the series’ legacy and the film itself. First off there’s a retrospective and comparison piece, “Hacking Back/Slashing Forward” which has Nispel and others talking about why the original is so dynamic and what he was hoping to recapture with this unfortunate installment. Then comes a “Pop Up Video” style “Terror Trivia Track” which, when it’s not annoying viewers by obstructing the film itself, asks inane questions about the series while offering a few “behind-the-scenes” moments in a picture-in-picture format. Finally, as the cherry on a sundae of sheer humiliation, Nispel and the cast and crew discuss the seven “best” kills of the film. True horror buffs will find the list horribly askew. The featurette wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t cement into the audience’s mind how little Nispel knows about the series and what’s expected.
The reboot gives Jason a guerrilla warfare style with a more bestial flow, but pretty much everything else in the movie works against that one perk. Watch it, but don’t be surprised by the stunning lack of creativity. Oh, and as for calling it the "Killer Cut" - wow, laughable. Nothing really added, so if you saw it in theaters, you didn't miss anything.
You could buy it on Blu-ray (sure it looks pretty), but for this one I’d recommend a digital download via iTunes, the Playstation Store or Amazon on Demand. Shelling out the cash for the Blu-ray doesn’t seem worth it for this movie.
"Friday the 13th: Killer Cut" is on sale June 16, 2009 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Marcus Nispel. Written by Damian Shannon, Mark Swift. Starring Aaron Yoo, Amanda Righetti, Danielle Panabaker, Derek Mears, Ryan Hansen.
