Friday the 13th

This remake of the cult horror film, Friday the 13th, is one of those "so bad it's good" kind of films where the smart audience member in all of us will go- "how incredibly stupid was that 'supposed to be cool' moment." Let me explain some of the stupidity (in fact, there was this guy in the theater behind me who looked and sounded like Bill Cosby who offered more amusement than the film by often uttering "those stupid fucking kids"). You know that old horror film adage that characters who misbehave by society's standards are the ones that are going to die. Well every character that decides to smoke pot and flash their tits is sure to get it. This might make more sense than some other recent horror slashers because Jason was "killed" by counselors who were too busy fucking and smoking to bother watching after a boy who couldn't swim. Jared Padelecki's character is the one that you would think would have the most sense but no, he instead decides to follow Jason instead of running away from the crazy hockey goalie. 

There are also a lot of pointless kills that are around just to show Jason killing. By pointless kills, I mean that Jason goes out of his way to kill other characters that aren't even related to the main batch of teens (like the prologue with the campers or that hick in his farm). The kills themselves aren't even creative. Like how Jason kills that girl who is hiding under the dock and then lifts her up to show us her nipples (speaking of nipples, pay close attention for this genius line of dialogue that I'm paraphrasing- "you have stupendous nipple placement"). Also, why does the environment look so grungy in a desolate kind of way- if there isn't fog there is a think underbrush.

The ironic thing is, this could've actually been a meaningful movie. Jason could be like Wes Craven's Freddy in A Nightmare On Elm Street or John Carpenter's Mike Myers in Halloween (pretend those pesky sequels didn't exist for a minute). Jason Voorhees could have a lot of deep complexities to him but even in the original films those were brushed over. And isn't the point of a remake these days, to lend a sense of that more modern real world flawed characterization that James Bond and Batman memorably received. Not for Friday the 13th. Jason is instead the same old crazy psycho-killer that doesn't seem to do much else.