The answer is dependent on one’s taste for such cinematic debauchery. While horror remakes are certainly impossible to win much critical acclaim, they make up most of horror’s recent output - and every once in a while one will make the cut. (Note: See our recent Feature article on Horror Remakes for a look at 10 of the best monstrous makeovers!) In such cases, a fresh look at a familiar fiendish face can be a thrilling screen experience.
It is also important to note that cheap, bloody crowd pleasers (when done well enough) are not without some merit. One of the most enduring film franchises has delivered on its promise to shock and entertain for three decades – the Friday the 13th saga. (Note: See yet another Feature article on the F13 series elsewhere at featurefilmreview.com!!)
Marcus Nispel (the director of Platinum Dunes’ Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) relives the gory days of one Jason Voorhees – a mentally ill psychopath eternally driven to avenge the death of his overprotective, murderous mother. He haunts the grounds of decaying Camp Crystal Lake and the surrounding countryside – gruesomely dispatching anyone foolish enough to take a stroll in his neck of the woods. As two separate groups of naïve youngsters quickly find out (and as the creepy old townsfolk of Crystal Lake already seem to know), Jason doesn’t like unexpected company.
 |
| A skinny dipper prays that Jason never got around to those swimming lessons. |
Stupid secondary characters - introduced only to be killed? Check. Mind-boggling bad performances from young unknown actors & actresses? No problem. Holes in logic and the laws of nature? You get some of that, too. But what did you really expect from what is essentially the twelfth (!) entry in a series that doesn’t center around James Bond?!
There were good times had by the packed theatre house: people screamed, jumped and laughed at the barrage of sex and violence. And as the latest man behind the hockey mask, Derek Mears puts his own two cents in as to what makes Jason tick. The first 15-20 minutes of the movie takes older viewers back to the 1980’s, when nearly each new year brought about another sleepover at cursed old “Camp Blood”. For our generation, Jason – along with Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Leatherface – was simply a new, bloodier version of Dracula, the Wolf Man or Frankenstein’s Monster. Those Universal Studios monsters are still around as well, implying that we’ll see Friday the 13th, Part XIII in another year or two. There’s no defense of a film like this other than to say that some of us still dig spending a few hours with the same boogeymen that frightened us as children. And that most of the surrounding teens and young adults getting their first big-screen face time with Jason will never know what is was like on the other side of the millennium – growing up with these films despite their dubious quality.
But I’ll take Jason over Jigsaw any old day.