Friday the 13th

Reviewed by:
John Devore

Directed by: Marcus Nispel

The Skinny: The ultimate 80's kill machine is back in an attempt to reboot the classic horror franchise. It's the same original formula with a new paint job: morally-questionable college students party near a spooky lake, then lose their sobriety, pants, and heads. But the star is Jason Voorhees, momma's boy, home-schooled butcher, and backwoods puritan.

The Good: This is not a sequel, which is a good thing in that the last time we saw Jason, he had been thawed out on a spaceship hundreds of years in the future. The best thing about this reboot is that the creators take care to be respectful of the original formula. The Friday the 13th movies were the perfect flicks for the Reagan Years. They served as cautionary morality tales in which hippie free love and casual drug abuse directly resulted in a huge, hulking dude skewering you to a tree with a pitchfork. This ethic is seeded throughout this new incarnation. For straight-up horror genre snobs, Friday the 13th is treated respectfully, and there are plenty of winks and references to past sequels. For normal people, there are enough fake-outs, jugular spurts, and screaming hotties to offer a pleasant jolt.

The Bad: It's Friday the 13th—if you find yourself in the theater seeing Friday the 13th, and you say, halfway through, "This is Friday the 13th! I hate it!" then screw yourself. This is 90 minutes of Real World cast members running into machetes. The worse that can be said about this flick is, even though it's first 15 minutes are gangbusters, the movie feels long at times. Longer than a movie that is an hour and a half should feel. And the kill scenes, the bread and butter of the genre, lack any kind of visceral impact. They neither disturb nor gross out, leaving a trail of anti-climaxes.

Harold and Kumar Die, Horribly: One lesson learned from this new Friday the 13th: do not gank J-Voo's weed.

Theater, DVD, or TNT in Five Years: If you're a horror junkie, see it in the theater. The rest can wait till cable to enjoy a reboot that verges on homage.