Review of Friday the 13th (2009) by James R — 17 Aug 2018

Wow was this movie so god damn bad. A reboot sort of this film is more of a retelling of original film plus the first three sequels borrowing aspects from all of them. The movie follows a young man named Clay MIller (Jared Padalecki) who is searching for his sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti) who went missing several weeks earlier.

Clay comes across a group of friends staying out at Crystal Lake. Among this group he befriends Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) who is the kindest of the bunch. Jenna's boyfriend Trent (Travis Van Winkle) is a huge jerk and doesn't want anything to do with Clay.

Soon enough the group realizes that there's something eerie going on at the lake and what do you know Jason (Derek Meers) soon starts taking these young adults out one by one. So what's the big issue here? We'll this being a Michael Bay produced film it just immediately loses all the appeal of the original films.

I actually saw this back in 2009 and remember liking it, but I hadn't seen the previous films before. Now becoming a self proclaimed fan of the series I can definitely tell you this one just doesn't get it.

Yes it's a darker mood to the whole film, the characters still can't act, and yeah there's a lot of corny parts to the movie including some over the top gratuitous sex scenes, but it just doesn't work.

The movie almost feels like 2 separate films with us seeing a sort of prologue in the beginning showing the plot of the first Friday the 13th (1980) followed by another 20 minute set explaining what happened to Whitney.

Then after all that we finally start the actual movie! It's almost like a different director did the prologue and first part...the execs saw it and said..."Let's do something else, but still keep this.

" The kills are actually well done, but I just didn't have fun with this one like I did with the older films. Definitely a step back as well for the "final girl." There almost really isn't one here either.

The movie strongly suggests that Panabaker is sort of our main heroine, but that does not play out at all! I never found a main character to root for, so it was just all so pointless. Overall, a skip for me since the film doesn't do the series justice.

I hope one day after all the legal issues of the franchise are figured out we can finally get a new one that has the same sort of spirit as the original films!