Friday the 13th

2/14/2017

'Friday the 13th' turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments when it comes to horror classics remakes. After watching the trailers, I got the wrong idea that this film was going to be more serious. The previews gave me the false impression that this remake was going to go deeper into Jason's background story or maybe even offer extremely gory murders, when in reality, it is exactly the opposite. I'm not one of those horror lovers who want to know everything related to the villains, their origins and such, but in this case, it would have been acceptable to throw in some flashbacks regarding Jason Voorhees' past. Unfortunately, this remake wastes all the opportunities to make this interesting and instead, it offers an exaggerated and ineffective amount of comedy situations that are

7/21/2019

***Scarier and with a more dangerous Jason, but not as fun*** I became a fan of the "Friday the 13th" series after seeing "Part V: A New Beginning" (1985) on TV in the late 90s and have subsequently digested all of the films in the series. This '09 reboot takes elements of the first four films, drops all campy elements seen in Part III (and V, VI, IX & X) and provides better scares with a more dangerous Jason, who runs, shoots arrows, uses traps and schemes. In the original series Jason was comparable to an unstoppable zombie-like force, particularly as the series progressed where Jason became more & more infernal and monstrous. Here he's more human, which makes sense since it's early in the timeline and Jason hasn't yet morphed into the hellish zombie he became in later segments. Th

5/19/2020

**The following is a long-form review that I originally wrote in 2009.** _Friday the 13th_, originally released in 1980 began one of the most successful film franchises of all time. Now, 31 years later, the newest incarnation of _Friday the 13th_ has just been released on Special Edition DVD. It seems unlikely that the director of the first film Sean S. Cunningham (who is also the producer of the 2009 version) could ever have seen just where the monster he had helped to create would go. So now, with the series being given one of those oh-so-popular of late "reboots", it's important to take a look at what Jason Voorhees has been up to, what has changed, and just as importantly, what hasn't. The film loosely follows the progression of the first four _Friday the 13th_ films, the opening

8/13/2021

A modern update of the cult following horror... Truly terrifying, and gore-tastic!

4/28/2026

This isn't bad, as far as a remake of a classic goes, but given the absolute wealth of tropes they could have pulled from, given the immense history of Jason and his franchise, this is pretty lackluster. It is technically proficient, and looks very good, but the characters are bland, the direction a bit flat at times, and Jason, well, he does what he is supposed to do, but not a lot more. This could have been better, if it actually HAD to be, at all.