Friday the 13th

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

You hear the same guys who did the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake are going to remake this one? I guess I'm curious. I mean, I like Jason, but these movies aren't exactly great. Meaning, it wouldn't really hurt my feelings if the remake sucked, and that there's also room for improvement. I'm assuming Bay, Nispel and Co. are going to go for a similar vibe as they did with TCM and make it a cliched and generic slasher picture, but also grim and violent.

Which is odd, because I always thought the F13 movies were fun, and not really scary or atmospheric. So, maybe we'll be getting a new take on Jason.

A month or 2 back, Shenan and I watched part 2, which I had remembered as being one of the good ones. But I had not seen it in a long time, and it turns out that it's pretty boring. It's got some good ideas, like the extended fake-out opening where the hero of part 1 gets killed. And there are some classic scenes, like the couple getting impaled while fucking, or the wheelchair kid flying down the stairs with a machete in his face. I guess this was the shit I remembered, but that I completely forgot that the rest of it is boring and poorly staged. And the plot makes no sense... Jason was never dead? He's some crazy redneck in the woods? Huh?

So I was a little nervous sitting down to watch this one, worried that I remembered it as being good even though it actually sucked.

But I am happy to report that it's exactly how I remember it: an average, entertaining Halloween ripoff. No more, no less. Important to us horror geeks for the series it spawned, but only a mild pleasure itself.

How this spun off into the biggest, most bloated slasher series of all time, I have no idea. It's a pretty modest, run-of-the-mill late 70s/early 80s slasher/whodunit with a few good ideas, some good gore and a couple of memorable scenes. It's funny though, if you were to watch this back-to-back with one of the later, indulgant sequels, you'd probably have no idea that the two movies were in any way related. But, the series perfectly charts the history of the slasher genre, the way it became more about the bodycount and the gore, etc. Not that part 1 was some classy affair, but it's interesting to watch the series descend into sleaze. (And frankly, some of the sleazier ones are a lot more entertaining than the original.)