What do you get when you mix sex, drugs and a deformed little boy who somehow comes back from the dead and watches his mother get decapitated right in front of his eyes? That’s right, Jason Voorhees, in Friday the 13th (2009), opening on Friday, February 13th.
This is no sequel, instead New Line and Paramount pictures got together and decided, like a lot of film companies, to “re-boot” the franchise. Like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Halloween” re-boots, we are introduced to a beloved character that many people have grown up with their whole lives. We are given only the basic origins, stripping away all that we have learned while watching and re-watching the many sequels starring these characters. For this version, the story is fairly basic. A group of young adults are following a lead that there is a large marijuana patch growing near some lake, unaware that they are close to a camp that has been closed for over 20 years due to a killing spree of a woman named Pamela Voorhees that took revenge upon the camp following the drowning death of her son Jason. Before we know it, Jason appears, and one by one (as all psychopathic characters seem to do) the group of friends are left bleeding to death by some type of wound. Fast forward six weeks later and a young man is investigating the disappearance of his sister, one of the missing group of friends. He then encounters a group of college students that have escaped for a weekend where they come across the deadly Jason.
Being relatively new to the idea of directing big budget movies, Marcus Nispel, who also directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) has another re-boot winner on his hand. He has taken the original story of Jason Voorhees and left out the part where he was killed in the 50s, to being thought dead in the 80s. Being the case that Jason didn’t really drown and having the movie almost 30 years later allows Marcus Nispel to age Jason naturally, bringing the character out of the supernatural realm to a much more acceptable and believable realm. Just like all of Friday the 13th films, we are also presented with the always welcome T&A scenes, which now rival all of the previous Friday the 13th films out there. Sadly, this film suffers from some weird editing cuts in the film, which takes away some realism of the film.
Finding the only real problem the awkward editing of this film, the rest of it was pure gold soaked in a bath of blood.
