Slashing for Sport at Camp Crystal Lake
Friday the 13th by Demon
I’ll admit I was a little embarrassed to buy a ticket to see the new Friday the 13th. Not only did I feel like the old guy sneaking into the rave, but a couple of young twerps – 10 year old kids on their way to see another movie – were heckling the movie while I waited in line.
“Have you ever seen Friday the 13th,” one of them said to the other. “It’s so stupid. It’s about this dude who won’t die no matter how times you kill him.” Perhaps I should have heeded their warning…
What’s amazing about the new Friday the 13th movie is how entirely not new the new movie is. Despite the creative fusing of elements from the first three Friday the 13th movies into a single title, there is nothing particularly updated or innovative going on here (except, perhaps, for the topless wakeboarding scene). The movie is so routine, in fact, that it could serve as a text book case study for the rules of the classic slasher film: dumbshit kids venture into the woods to party and have sex and get killed by a maniac with a hockey mask.
What did I expect… Hamlet goes to camp?
No, but I did figure on seeing something inventive at least. Perhaps even mildly scary.
I always found certain elements from the first two Friday the 13th movies to be pretty creepy. The headless mother stuff, the drowned child stuff, the bloody girl chased through the woods stuff – and it’s easy to imagine a modern day movie that utilizes those elements to frightening effect. I was hoping for a clever origin story, something that takes the sprawling Friday the 13th mythology and restores it to planet Earth (Jason was in outer space the last time I checked in with the “old” series).
Unfortunately, the formative days of young Mr. Voorhees are dealt with pretty cursorily here. Instead, the main concern is outfitting the world’s most dangerous manchild with his iconic hockey mask as soon as possible in order to get on with the business of killing teenagers in creative ways. It’s not at all unlike a sequel to one of the earlier movies… maybe something squeezed in between parts three and four.
Disappointments aside, the killings themselves are actually pretty entertaining in terms of violent exploitation. Jason disposes of countless dweebs using just about anything one might find lying around a hardware or sporting goods store. In fact, his proclivity to knock off teens with sports equipment (arrow, boat, hockey stick, speargun) is so insistent that I started wondering if the young lad actually did learn something at summer camp. His counselors might have been terrible when it came to swimming lessons, but they must have been pros when it came to archery.
If I felt embarrassed going into the movie, I felt even more so coming out. Just as the little twerps predicted, Jason did rise again after supposedly dying (remember when that kind of thing used to actually be scary?) Hopefully now that he’s got his mask back on he’ll do something a bit more interesting the next time around. Like play some hockey.
Related posts:
- Friday the 13th
- Hollywood Trends Change Faster Than a Werewolf at Midnight
- Martyrs Tortures Audience Along With Characters
- Day of the Dead Wastes No Time Wasting Zombies
- Simulation, Sublimation, and Cinema on Halloween
seemed like they made jason faster just to catch up with what all the zombie movies are doing. I thought he was scarier when he was slow, because he was gonna get you no matter what, and just take his time doing it. it was much creepier.
god, you must be a perv.
topless wakeboarding is popular at Lake Havasu. thank you to the makers of this movie for bringing this little known sport to the mainstream