I’m a sucker. I’ve been a sucker since I was a little kid. I think it started with the Toxic Avenger but I can’t be sure. Somewhere in the wee hours of the mornings glued to TNT Jason Voorhees suckered me into a love affair with "B" grade movies that’s lasted 20 years. You can only imagine my excitement when the billboards started popping up all over LA re-introducing a whole new generation to Jason.
Friday the 13th has been talked about as a remake. To anyone who spent their childhood watching Friday the 13th marathons in their basement or to true slasher film fans we know from the trailer this is not a remake. Jason Voorhees is 12 years old in the 1980 original, and he isn’t the one wielding a machete. It’s Mrs. Voorhees avenging her sons drowning in Crystal Lake that makes up for all the killings in the original, until of course her head gets chopped off by a camp counselor, ending the first movie, and giving way to Jason Voorhees and his machete, axe, harpoon, shovel etc. to scare the pants off of unsuspecting teenage sinners for the next 11 sequels.
The set up to this re-boot is pretty fantastic. The opening 20 minutes answers all the questions a fan of the series will have and by the time the title card flashed on the screen I had a sheepishly sly smile on my face. While I welcomed the modern day Jason with open arms, I did find my self a little annoyed at one thing in particular.
The recent reincarnations of Leatherface, Michael Myers, and now, Jason, have all followed a distinctive pattern; Lot’s of face time. Part of the appeal to slasher movies is the unseen. In the older films, Jason is revealed to us piece by piece, we never get to take him in for too long, at least not until the end. In this new version Jason is a Hollywood star and gets about as much face time as a star should get, and some pretty decent lighting to boot. Long shots, medium shots, close ups and extreme close ups take away from the suspense that the earlier films possessed. There is even a super-heroesque shot towards the end of act III romanticizing our hockey mask-wearing psychopath.
My vote; A true fan of the series will be tickled to see an old friend up to his same old tricks, even if they’re not as good as they used to be.
