His Take/Her Take: Friday the 13th (2009)
Posted February 13, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Worth the price of admission, or a waste of time? Brian McKechnie and Suzanne Ellis offer you their take on the latest movies hitting screens. Read their reviews every Friday, exclusively on CityNews.ca.
Let Brian and Suzanne know what you think of His Take/Her Take via email at brian.mckechnie@citynews.ca or suzanne.ellis@citynews.ca .
FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009)
Rated R
Cast: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Aaron Yoo
Directed by: Marcus Nispel
Official Site IMDb
Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears) wears a hockey mask and kills lots of teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake.
Brian’s Take
*** out of 5 stars
The new Friday the 13th “retelling” is everything I expected and then some. Lots of nudity, bad dialogue/acting and brutal violence. If you’re a fan of the Friday the 13th series (this is number 12 if you include Freddy vs. Jason) you will not be disappointed. Jason is bigger than ever (played by the 6′ 5″ Derek Mears), meaner than ever (one victim is burned to death inside a sleeping bag which is pure evil) and faster than ever (he actually runs at his victims a few times). The one downside to the film is that it’s not as scary as it could be and goes for cheap laughs more often than I’d like. As a Friday the 13th junky I’d still put this at the top of my list in the series though (but I do have a soft spot for Part VI: Jason Lives). On a more local note the Toronto/Montreal band Stars appears on the soundtrack in the one scene. According to the band’s label the producers of the film are fans.
Suzanne’s Take
* out of 5 stars
You know the characters in a horror movie are annoying when you’re rooting for the bad guy to finish them off, and fast. And as my His Take/Her Take co-reviewer Brian points out, this Jason is fast. Taking a cue from Danny Boyle’s accelerated 28 Days Later zombies, director Marcus Nispel replaces the lumbering Jason of auld with a swifter, stronger version. In fact it’s as though everything is ramped up in this reimagining of the classic Friday the 13th (I say reimagining because as fans know the hockey mask-wearing Jason doesn’t show up until later in the series). The nudity is even more gratuitous (topless waterskiing, anyone?), the humour cruder, the violence gorier. And yes, Jason comes up with a few new and original ways to dispatch his victims. The audience seemed to eat it up. I was, on the whole, disappointed – I’m as big a horror fan as anyone, and I grew up watching the Friday the 13th flicks. And while I welcome a return to old-fashioned slashers (never got into the Saw, Hostel breed of horror film), this one was relatively low on jolts, with characters that, as I mentioned earlier, you hope don’t make it out of Camp Crystal Lake. Jason, on the other hand, well, we know he plans to stick around for a while.
