|
[Feb. 16th, 2009|06:25 pm] |
Okay... so fuck the rest of the shit about Friday the 13th. The rest of the movies past 4 suck, with the exception of six and a few parts of seven. 8 is awful, even though it did spawn my idea for the most random music video of all time. 9 barely features Jason, as he's body hopping as a demon worm most of the time. Jason X.... I appreciated that it's not taking itself seriously, and really, they're not taking themselves seriously, but once Uber Jason showed up, it all went to shit. Freddy vs Jason was... okay. I wish Kane Hodder came back to play Jason. Ken Kirzinger was good as stoic, physically imposing Jason, but the depth and emotion Hodder gave the character is unsurpassable. Almost until now.
Kyle and I caught the 4:10 showing of the new Friday the 13th. I went into it with an open mind, because I'd heard both good and bad things about it. I figured it couldn't be any worse than some of the worst of the series. Besides, aside from the Amityville Horror remake, Michael Bay's production company can actually pull off decent remakes.
So the first few minutes of the film show, essentially, the end of the first movie, with the death of Mrs. Voorhees. Then it shows Jason, picking up a locket his mother had, and grabbing the murder weapon (a machete), and stalking off into the forest. They don't really show much of Jason, just a hand or leg. It's a given that he's a young boy, deeply affected by the loss of his mother, so he decides revenge is the only way to go. Then it shows a bunch of hippie kids travelling into the woods, looking for a pot stash. One guy finally finds it, as the others are off screwing around with their girlfriends, and runs into Jason, who's all grown up now. He's got a burlap sack over his head, a la the second film, but he looks much more imposing now. After one kid gets caught in a beartrap, he hangs a girl by her sleeping bag over the fire. Impressive. The kid in the beartrap winds up getting a machete in his skull in a rather visceral scene. The other two explore Jason's home, and we're left to assume they're all dead.
After that, the film establishes the main characters, a bunch of party-kids and a few girls, as well as a rugged loner looking for his missing sister (who was one of the five in the opening scene). Generally, they establish the general range of characters you'd expect to see in a horror movie. The ignorant, dumb jock, the skanky girlfriend, the smart, sensible girl, the token ethnic characters, and the few minor characters that don't hold any real significance. There are some impressive deaths that pay tribute to some of the more iconic deaths of the series.
Derek Mears, the guy who plays Jason, is absolutely amazing. He's HUGE, physically imposing, and very ominous when he needs to be. The scene were he acquires the hockey mask is AWESOME. It kinda reminds me of the scene in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, where Leatherface puts the skinmask on, and kinda checks himself out in the mirror. They also do a nice job of never showing Jason's face in full. The scene where the burlap sack gets ripped off of his head is the first time, and we only get a very brief flash of it before he kills the guy, realizes the sack is ripped apart, and finds the hockey mask. The second time is the end, where he gets thrown into the water, and you see his face for a brief second as he submerges. They teased it towards the end as well, when he's grabbing a girl's leg, and she starts kicking at his face, but they don't get the mask off.
The film is far from perfect, however. There's a lot of predictable moments, and while there's tons of sex, which is staple for a slasher film, it's drawn out for too long in this. Though Jason staring through the window at a couple having sex is hilarious. If I can remember anything else about the movie, I'll add it later. Gonna go raid in World of Warcraft.
|
|
|