Erratic Viewings: Friday the 13th (2009)

Welcome back to Erratic Views Week...that isn't really a week planned persay. Well it is finally here. I am caving into this request and subjecting myself reprising to the horrors that is music video and feature film director Marcus Nispel (Janet Jackson: Design of a Decade 1986/1996, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Frankenstein, Pathfinder, Conan the Barbarian and Exeter). Allow me to elaborate. I sat the 2003 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and was bored to tears. Sadly the only upside to this movie was Jessica Biel in a wife beater undershirt in the rain maker. Yup, one sexist pig thought and that was its only redeeming value.   Conan wasn't bad.   Thought Momoa did a good job, Stephen Lang was a bit over the top but nothing was as tragic is accepting tiny Rose McGowan as a demonic sorceress. So with this all in mind, once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; This is Friday the 13^th.

So the rain soaking all yer bits? Sorry hun.

We flashback to the far past of 1980!!!! Why, they had payphones, Sony Walkmans and Atari 2600!

So we look on to primitive humanity as Pamela Vorhees (Nana Visitor of One Life to Live, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dark Angel, Wildfire, The Resident and Torchwood) apparently has cleaned house and no Adrienne King to lop her head off. Or is there? Yeah so the last counselor is dealt with and mongoloid toddler Jason finds mom dead and then fade to modern day. Such story telling skills! Enter our collective twenty something chuckleheads!!!

Wade (Jonathan Sadowski of American Dreams, Pool Guys, She's the Man, Live Free or Die Hard, $#*! My Dad Says and Young & Hungry), Whitney (Amanda Righetti of Pipeline, Return to House on Haunted Hills, Role Models, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Mentalist and Colony), Richie (Ben Feldman of The Perfect Man, Cloverfield, Friday the 13^th, As Above, So Below, Silicon Valley and Superstore) Mike (Nick Mennell of My Little Eye, Halloween, The Lost Tribe, Friday the 13^th, Southland, Bad Parents and Crossbones) and Amanda (America Olivo of The Thirst: Blood War, Friday the 13^th, Neighbor, The Last Resort, Bitch Slap, Maniac, Chicago P.D. , Defiance and Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation).

Well beats a potato sack, I suppose.

What is our trope troop doing out in these foreign and dangerous woods??? Looking for cannabis. Yup weed hunt. So they can score large quantities I guess. One of the doofs claims this is the best region for such and if he did so much research to that why the f*ck didn't he know about gruesome murders 30 years prior??!! Oh what's that? Oh he knows it happened and he got this all second hand. Brillant. The power of exposition tells us in a very half-assed way about a lone counselor took out Pamela, Jason got her eventually and no real even hint to why or how Jason rose from the dead.

So spoilers, the party gets butchered like pigs except Amanda because...she has a passing resemblance to mommy?? So clearly chain her up and keeps her forevers and evers. Yeah Jason's brain functions have always been in question but hey it's new?? Worry not guys, there's bouncing boobies. You're welcome.

I think Dean's not telling me everything.  I dunno.

Six weeks later, more cannon fodder comes to Crystal Lake to...screw...drink...smoke a spliff and die. Yeah I know I gave away the formula so carefully guarded all these years. Trent (Travis Van Winkle of Accepted, Transformers, Friday the 13^th and The Last Ship) and his buds all go to his parents' summer cabin for beer, bonding and bootyah!!! Ugh. Trent's lady friend Jenna (Danielle Panabaker of Sky High, Empire Falls, Piranha 3DD, Bones, Necessary Roughness, Justified, This Isn't Funny, Arrow and The Flash) encounters a strapping stork of a fellow name of Clay (Jared Padalecki of Gilmore Girls, Flight of the Phoenix, House of Wax, House of Fears, Supernatural, Friday the 13^th, Supernatural: The Animation and Phantom Boy) rocking his proper Sam Winchester hairdo and not his Prince Adam coif from House of Wax. Clay is out searching for his sister Whitney and I really wanted to help him but have not yet mastered the Bugs Bunny/She-Hulk/Deadpool breaking of the fourth wall so he will just have to settle for Jenna's help as she needed some air, be away from douchey boyfriend and aid others in their time of need. No offense to Winkle there but Sammy boy is vastly prettier.

Jason (Derek Mears of Cursed, The Hills Have Eyes II, Dragon Wars: D-War, Hellbinders, Predators, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Hatchet III, Grimm as the Krampus and True Blood) dispenses with the usual hide and go seek and gets right to doing our party goers in. Dinking around in the forest, Jenna and Clay head into the former Crystal Lake cabin area to see Jason dragging a body of which, you know you never really saw that much in the originals. You saw them propped up or tossed through a window or my favorite, strung up in a tree but yeah not a lot of the prop building seminar. Will Jenna and Clay make it out??? Can they find Whitney???

Okay the rants begin. So rather than the traditional Harry Manfredi music and given Michael Bay production, they went with the so-so composer Steve Jablonsky (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher, Transformers, Dragon Wars: D-War, Gears of War 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Transformers: War for Cybertron and Battleship). So it's either hyper-testosterone driven FPS and third-person games or loads of horror remakes. The film itself is professionally done as in lighting, sound, editing and acting buuuuuut.... the story just feels like the first three original flicks dropped in a blender and hit frappe. No real story is explored, the dialogue is painful and these "characters" are for the most part one dimensional. It's Texas Chainsaw Recon all over again!!!! Actually Panabaker and Padalecki are the only ones with decent and feasible dialogue.

Loads of questions come to mind. Who killed Pamela?!? Why were these deaths in 1980 never investigated??? How has Jason's body somehow be preserved all this time?? How come the power company hasn't shut off the power to an long since abandoned summer camp? Where in the nine hells did he get the hockey mask!?! I saw no Shelly roaming around with a mask. Do the locals not believe in exorcising the lake or getting liquored up, grabbing rifles and shotguns going on a Vorhees hunt?? Why did the title appear 23 minutes into the film?! What about Scarecrow's brain!?! WHO THE HELL IS THE MUFFIN MAN!???!

Sadly our film was brought us by the writers of Freddy vs Jason. In acknowledgement of this suffering, I will be the better man and not give out their names nor will I google their home addresses for you to wreak deadly vengeance on them. Of course you could IMDB them by title alone and then google them but again, must be the better man. Okay rant ended.

Gurgle...