Tag Archives: Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th 2009 2.5/5

Friday the 13th 2009

Dark reboot of the original series, which is boring when Jason isn’t around, and pretty good when he is. There’s numerous references to the ‘classic’ movies, especially the first 3 (but there are definitely other visual references to other ones), but it has very, very baggy sections throughout. I also missed the whispering breath scoring of the original series (we get it a little at the beginning). I actually liked some of the minor characters (the Asian guy and the black guy), and also how at least 1 character was deliberately written to be a tool (thus making his death more satisfying), but I wasn’t that keen on the liberal borrowing from other horror franchises. There was borrowings from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, for example.

Overall, worth a watch if you’re a horror fan, but go in with low, low expectations.

Jason X

Jason X

Okay, we’re now on the 10th Friday the 13th movie, and this alone should alert you you’re heading for a barrel of crap. If so, your film radar is suitably developed, but switch that beeping screen off. It’s misleading you. And don’t expect a full-horror fare – this is comedy/action with the horror being a simple springboard. This is to the Friday 13th Series what ‘Army of darkness’ is to the Evil Dead series.

What Jason X is is a fun, dumb film that has just enough wit, action and snippets of cool dialogue and self-reference to make it a tip-top popcorn movie. And believe it or not, no less than David Cronenberg apparently liked the script and premise enough to do a cameo. Good times!

So I think this is actually non-canon and doesn’t really follow on from number 9, and is set in the future, where a deep-frozen Jason is recovered from the now-uninhabitable Earth, but then circumstances and lack of attention allow the big guy to thaw out.

Okay, Jason comes back to life on a space ship, that happens to be carrying space-Special-Forces guys, a group of college kids, and a very cute lady robot.

After some fun dispatching the grunts in various amusing and ‘ouch!’ ways, it’s time for Jason to do that hoodoo he does so well. Along the way, he does his usual machete thing (of course), has a face-off with the ladybot who gets suitable software updates to turn her into a terminatrix (played by a lady that reminds me a lot of Karen Black), and he appears to be dead. But… he is rendered lifeless in the medic lab, where the nanobots used to repair damaged tissues have escaped, and the little fellows find their way into Jason, giving us… BIONIC JASON!

There’s lots of funnies that are even funnier if you know anything about the Friday 13th series, but you don’t really need this background to enjoy – it’s still pretty good without this. The most amusing is, when the few survivors need to distract Jason for a short time during escape, they create a holodeck around him of Camp Crystal with 2 hotties in sleeping blankets who say stuff like ‘we just love premarital sex!’ – suitably enraging the big lug while escape is attempted.

This is way, way better than it has any right to be.

Freddy Versus Jason 3/5

Freddy Vs Jason

Yeah, reasonably fun, but with long sections with too little Jason or Freddy, especially in the first half. When they actually were either fighting or terrorising the kids, it was decent enough, but a little more Freddy humour would have been nice. Decent turn in a minor role by genre great Katherine Isabelle (her from the Ginger Snaps trilogy, and American Mary).

Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood 2.5/5

Friday the 13th Part 7

Ridiculous sequel where, even though people find corpses throughout the woods, they act as if nothing has happened and decide to get some air in the same woods. It’s not completely without charm though, as Kane Hodder’s reanimated Jason gives us a steady stream of kills, and the premise of Jason vs Carrie is a decent one, even though the film doesn’t really deliver on it.

Friday the 3th 5:A New Beginning 1/5

Friday the 3th 5:A New Beginning

wow this is rank. Every single character exists only to die in a usually cursory and unconvincing way, as they meander through dialogue that exists only to bridge the bodycount. Even the motivation of this new “Jason” is utterly ridiculous. A couple of the deaths had a little frisson, but that about it. The very beginning, with Corey Feldman, was maybe the only decent part.

Freddy Vs Jason, Friday The 13th (2009) and Never Sleep Again – 127

Freddy Vs Jason

We finally finish 2 movie marathons we’ve been doing, completing the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises with Freddy Vs Jason, the Friday the 13th remake, and the 4-hour documentary about Nightmare on Elm Street, ‘Never Sleep Again’. With additional bits on Jason X, the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, and the comic strip ‘Jason Vs Freddy Vs Ash’, and various other movies we’ve watched, it’s a packed show.