Marcus Nispel
Marcus Nispel
Friday The 13th (2009)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Okay, let me start off by saying this: If you loved the original Friday movies, do not see this movie! If you've never seen the Friday movies, watch them first, and if you like them, do not watch this movie.
To any of you who have had the great pleasure of reading my reviews before, will know that I won’t hold back and I will tell you the truth. This movie was a porno, with it's fairly simplistic graphics and unnecessary nudity. This film was over done and unthought out.
Directed by Marcus Nispel, and written by Damien Shannon and Mark Swift, the 2009 remake of the american horror classic drew in huge revenues. The generation that grew up with the Friday movies was drawn to the movie to see Jason’s roots, while the pop culture generation wanted to see blood and guts. Unfortunately, the pop culture won and the movie was basically a blood-fest. Friday the 13th was made to help people understand where Jason got his sadistic nature, and is a re-imagining of the first four films.
The film follows Clay Miller, played by Jared Padalecki (Gilmore Girls, Supernatural), as he searches for his sister, who had disappeared six weeks earlier while on a trip with her friends. On his search, he runs into a motley crew of teenagers, who happen to be traveling into the depths of the woods to a cabin, which just so happens to be about 1.5 miles north of Camp Crystal Lake.
The crew consists of your classic new wave horror movie stereotypes; The good girl (Danielle Panabaker) dating the bad guy (Travis van Winkle) who’s cheating on her with the slut (Julianna Guill) who is being neurotically followed by the geeky asian kid (Aaron Yoo), who is best friends with the unsightly black guy with ten lines and weed (Arlen Escarpeta),who cares way too much about the adventurous couple who dared to go outside and water ski naked (Ryan Hansen and Willa Ford).
They all die...oooo shocker right.
Anyway, the movie is supposed to be focused on Jason’s childhood; how he got the hockey mask and how he ended up being the crazy psychopath that he is. However, the movie was geared more towards a younger, newer audience and was centered mostly around sex, drugs, alcohol and boobs. Jason, played by Caleb Guss, continues on with his fervent rampage and kills off tons of people sparing no-one, but we surprisingly learn he keeps a victim as a pet and treats her like his mother. And that he’s amazingly good at archery! Who knew?
The graphics are like any other new horror movie, good but nothing to be awed at. Basically a whole lot of blood spurting out of the wrong artery and a lot of darkness. They still haven't figured out how to allow you to see the movie and still let you know its night-time. Asylum Visual Effects had the task of creating the special effects of the movie, such as the machete and deaths. Nispel wanted to allow the viewer to be able to watch the victim die, so rather than have a fake head and real machete, what you see in the film is a computer animated machete. The whole time. Asylum also digitally remade the actors emotions and facial expressions, because apparently they couldn't act. Which is made clear by the polls. According to Rotten Tomatoes and MegaCritic, the film averaged a 21 and 34 out of 100 from pro critics, newspaper writers and editors. Dan Zak from The Washington Post writes that the film “fails to provide laughs, scares, suspense or gore” and Kyle Smith of The New York Post felt that Nispel; “made no attempt to create a movie beyond blood and guts, and the attempts that were made were forgettable.”
And, yes in case you were wondering, the film left off with a really open ending, so it could bank on a sequel. Yay.
3/10
Review by: Talia Mazzilli