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Letterboxd Reviews

So as you know, I stopped writing lengthy reviews on this site this year, keeping the blog as more of a film diary of sorts.  Lo and behold,...

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Movie Review - Friday the 13th (2009)

Starring a Bunch of Teen Stars You've Probably Never Heard Of
Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift
Directed by Marcus Nispel

Shockingly, this rehash of the Friday the 13th series (of which I don't think I've ever seen a complete movie, but I've certainly seen in bits and pieces edited on tv during the Halloween season every year) starts off with a really great credit sequence. We learn that as a child the personality-deficient Jason (seriously, he's one of the least interesting characters to ever have a franchise created around him) witnessed a Camp Crystal Lake counselor behead his mother. Cut to many years later and a group of five teens are traveling through the woods by the camp in search of some mythic treasure trove of marijuana that's rumored to be in the area. Of course, because these kids all smoke weed and have sex, this leads into Jason's first initial attack in the present day. After some moderately cool kills, 23 minutes into the movie, we get the title of the movie flashed up on the screen. Kind of cool that they waited that long.

The problem is that those first 23 minutes (which, despite bringing nothing new to the table, are actually entertainingly executed) happen all over again over the next hour. Another group of teens shows up in the area. They do drugs, they get naked, they have sex (or they waterski topless or they pleasure themselves to an L.L. Bean winter collection catalog), and then they die. There's some silly plot point about some teen searching for his lost sister whom was part of the first batch of kids that died. SPOILER AHEAD...Of course, you think that the sister's dead, but because Jason thinks that the sister looks like his dead mother (?!?!?!), he keeps the sister alive.

The thing is that the movie follows all the standard horror movie clichés. In particular, the notion that if you're pure, you'll stay alive. You can pinpoint from the very beginning which of the teens are going to bite the dust and which are going to make it until at least the final reel. Here's a tip for all you ladies -- If you ever find yourself in some scary woods or some scary house, don't show anyone your boobs...at all...ever...because you'll undoubtedly get stabbed through the head with a machete.

The RyMickey Rating: D+

4 comments:

  1. http://tinyurl.com/4etexr

    I don't really know how to feel about you advising people to not show off their knockers in the woods. How else am I supposed to my future ex's?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Except i fucked up the sentence.

    Dammit

    ReplyDelete
  3. i wasn't gonna call you out on that, but, since you mentioned it...yes, you did...

    ReplyDelete