2/17/09: Friday the 13th (2009)
First, we’d like to congratulate ourselves for writing a post on Presidents’ Day. That’s like a religious holiday now. Then we’d like to complain about how only posting twice a week was supposed to spare us from coming up empty on Friday when we went to early screenings for films that wouldn’t be as conservative as we’d hoped. That’s not working out this year. First we had
Taken, and now we’ve got the new re-imagining of
Friday the 13th.
We were actually looking forward to this one—especially after
My Bloody Valentine 3-D turned out to be so much fun. We also liked how new director Marcus Nispel did great work with his earlier remake of
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That reboot wasn’t some kind of conservative triumph on the level of Zach Snyder’s
Dawn of the Dead or Alexandre Aja’s
The Hills Have Eyes. It was still an improvement on the original.
We also weren’t expecting a conservative triumph from the new
Friday the 13th. It seemed more likely that this new vision would step away from the morality of the old series. For those who’ve skipped the countless essays, the original
Friday the 13th films were big symbols of the Reagan era. That was established back in 1980. The first
Friday the 13th was about a mother killing a bunch of sex-crazed teenagers as revenge for how her neglected son once died at Camp Crystal Lake. (The teens who were supposed to be watching her kid were busy getting busy.)
The first sequel then brought Jason to life as that neglected son, who turned out to have survived his drowning and had grown up in the woods. He shared his motivation with mom over the course of endless sequels—with Jason’s hatred for horny teens becoming a joke by the time he went into space with
Jason X.
This new
Friday the 13th ups the morality and the mortality. Nispel starts the film with the death of Jason’s avenging mother, and then crams in another
Friday the 13th entry before the title card even appears. (We’re now entering slight SPOILER territory.) That further opening scene provides a fine mini-massacre of kids who’ve gone looking for a mythical crop of marijuana growing on the outskirts of abandoned Camp Crystal Lake. This extended segment could’ve been lifted straight from the right-wing slasher film
The Tripper.
The second pre-title sequence also hammers in the idea of Jason as moral madman. Two of the teens find Jason’s old room at Camp Crystal Lake. One of them notes that the contents seem to come from another century. The immediate opening establishes that Jason’s mother committed her own mayhem in 1980. She was raising her kid in another time, though, with toys that include a ’50s-looking item called a Yankee Doodle Uke.
Jason has plenty to hate when the proper story starts with yet another set of teens. The gang that takes up most of the film continues the
Friday the 13th tradition—actually, a tradition already reestablished in this one remake—of moronic dolts who need a good slashing. One of them even sports a “F**k Christmas” t-shirt. In contrast, the sole good guy is wearing a t-shirt that’s a throwback to when kids played with toys like a Yankee Doodle Uke.
From there, Nispel helms an impressive film, including one shot that deserves to become the definitive screen image of Jason. (Never mind that it doesn’t make sense.) This remake is certainly more fun than any adult could expect from the umpteenth take on a film that he first saw on an opening weekend 28 years ago. That was back when Jimmy Carter was President. We’re certainly not feeling nostalgic for those days now.
Make it your own: In
theaters now—playing to audiences full of people who’d make good victims in the next sequel. Also,
National Review just ran
an article on the
Friday the 13th films. Maybe you’ll be able to get past the first paragraph.
