FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009)
Oh, how the mighty have fallen…
I’ll immediately give Marcus Nispel’s “remake” Friday the 13th some credit for not taking the Prom Night and Alien Vs. Predator route of abandoning the signature gore of its source material for a teen-friendly PG-13 rating, a decision that seems to have worked given the film’s record-breaking $45 million opening. But while avoiding Horror-Lite, writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have committed an almost greater crime - they’ve given us Jason-Lite, a once relentlessness supernatural monster without conscious, now an underground-tunnel-dwelling cabin boy prone to kidnapping ingenues who remind him of mommy. And worst of all, for a “remake,” they’ve given us nothing new.
This is, let’s face it, a sequel. And like all Friday the 13th sequels, the plot is essentially the same (teenagers take to the woods to party, only to be picked off one by one by masked killer); the acts are the same (Act One: get to woods; Act Two: start to die; Act Three: the only remotely decent teenagers are the last left standing and make their daring escape; Coda: one last scare!); and the killer is the same. But because Friday the 13th sequels are generally disregarded by all but die-hard fans, it seems obvious that the gimmick of packaging this as a “remake” was clearly for a bigger box office, which at some level can be forgiven (studios, after all, are businesses), but at the very least they could have worked a little harder to give us something fresh.
Rob Zombie’s take on Halloween , for example, introduced new ideas and insight to a classic horror icon - and what’s more, to a film revered as a well-crafted masterpiece of its genre, not so with Friday the 13th. It was ballsy and definitively of his own vision, and while his reinvention didn’t always work for me, I enjoyed revisiting a favorite and familiar place through the eyes of an artist who thought it might be fun to take the story to another level. I didn’t buy into his deconstruction of Michael Myers - I prefer to think of Michael as a purely malevolent being, as Evil as Dr. Loomis suggests - but it didn’t stop me from enjoying a different take on the character. A straight remake of Halloween that didn’t introduce anything new wouldn’t have worked for me - I’ve seen Halloween, it’s an untouchable classic, what would have been the point? Few people knocked Gus Van Sant’s Psycho for poor acting or direction - they knocked it for existing.
Watching Nispel’s Friday the 13th, I started thinking about Police Academy. I really did enjoy the first one when it came out (and, admittedly, I like two of its sequels as well…), but the franchise isn’t one well regarded by critics. If some fanboy decided today to write a Policy Academy sequel, there’s no way a studio would back it - it’s been too long, and the sequels in the franchise grew increasingly stupid. If, however, there was a spike in the popularity of slapstick comedies, and/or comedies about police officers (or Mall Cops…), I could see a Police Academy remake given the greenlight. Absolutely. And they’d probably spend the first ten minutes recapping the 1984 original (as Nispel’s Friday the 13th recaps the entirety of its original within the opening credits, essentially giving murderous Mrs. Voorhees a total kiss off - where is the love??), and the rest of the film would be nothing more than a sequel packed as a remake, and it would cash in as such.
Friday the 13th Part XII, in other words, would have never pulled in $45 million.
All this being said, yes, this is a film about a big guy in a hockey mask killing off stoners. And for many, this will suffice. The movie is bloody enough, though suspenseful would be too generous - there’s not a scare you don’t see coming in this film, with the exception perhaps of a barking dog (I should have seen that coming…). And the “teen”-agers are appropriately annoying - I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “douche bag” in a review, but actor Travis Van Winkle does an impeccable job playing an all-too-familiar douche bag named Trent, and it’s always fun having at least one character to cheer against, and to be ready to stand up and clap at the inevitable moment of their bloody dispatch.
But it would have been great to see something new. Or at least to see the filmmakers have some fun with remaking this slasher classic. Set it in the 70’s. Bring back Kevin Bacon. Anything to make this feel like a sequel in disguise, and a tragically lost opportunity.
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