The image of a silent stalker in a hockey mask slicing up teenagers in the woods is one that has haunted many an eighth-grade sleepover. None of those were mine, and I was never particularly interested in immersing myself in the whole mythology behind Friday the 13th. When the remake was announced, however, I finally decided to take the plunge and discover what was behind the popularity of Jason Voorhees.
The movie begins on June 13, 1980, which I assume is a Friday, at Camp Crystal Lake where Jason Voorhees' mom is berating a poor camp counselor about how she let her mentally disabled son drown and how she is going to kill her for revenge. The counselor turns the tables though, and is able to kill the mom and escape. Little did Mrs. Voorhees know that Jason did not drown (whoops) and is going to continue to kill in her name with a machete until the end of time.
Flash forward to the present day, where five teens are looking for a marijuana plantation near Camp Crystal Lake - a marijuana plantation guarded, for completely unexplained reasons, by Jason Voorhees. All of them are pretty dumb and prove to be easy prey for Jason. It's not long before they're all slaughtered in different brutal ways.
That is where I got confused about the appeal of the Friday the 13th series, or at least this installment. The kills, from what I've been told, are supposed to be the most entertaining part, but director Marcus Nispel is completely ill-equipped to film the kills stylishly. Some kills at least attempt to be clever, such as the girl burned alive in the sleeping bag, but Nispel appears to be inept at making that seem horrifying, making me wonder if this film isn't supposed to be horrifying, what's the point?
As the movie drags on, more teens come to Crystal Lake and one of them looks for his sister, who was in the first group searching for the marijuana. Mostly, I felt I had missed the boat on the whole Jason Voorhees phenomenon. As each of the remaining teens was murdered in various ways, I just wished that I could find some entertainment value in their deaths. And as I wished for more entertainment in their deaths, the worse I felt as a person. I guess the Friday the 13th movies are just not for me.
3 Culture
Ethan Goldsmith
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