It’s surprising when a film, let alone a horror movie remake, actually does well. “Friday the 13th” is no different.
It’s hard to see a new installment of something that has been diluting itself since the 1980s as a serious movie. “Friday the 13th” has gone through good (the first three films), bland (four through six), bad (seven and eight) and the farcical nearing death of the franchise (“Jason Goes to Hell,” “Jason X” and “Freddy vs Jason”). There was the defined progression from good to horrendous. So, if people drew the line to: the remake would be absolutely horrible; it would be understandable.
The remake for “Friday the 13th” is something special though. It’s something that could completely revitalize the series, due to the re-imagining of Jason Vorhees. From the first second to the last, it covers the basic plots of the first three movies of the series. It opens up with the initial slaughter caused by Mrs. Vorhees, but it only really covers the climax where Mrs. Vorhees loses her head, literally. Then in comes the re-imagined force of nature at its most brutal, Jason Vorhees. He’s quicker, stronger, graceful and more elegant in his movements. The most faithful thing in his path of destruction is the fact that will use anything and everything to kill a target, including himself. The big difference though, taking a cue from Rob Zombie’s “Halloween,” is he takes a prisoner; though the tie between the girl he takes, but doesn’t kill, isn’t clearly defined.
The lighting adds to the intensity of an already quickened pace. The music, when it’s good standard horror movie music, adds to the atmosphere that is already piled on through camera work.
There are moments where things do go wrong. Some casting decisions, and chemistry between some people because of the casting, just weren’t believable at all. Come on, you’re actors acting like friends. SELL IT! To be absolutely blunt about it, I was praying for the deaths of some of the characters because they were so bland and unbelievable. I was so irritated with their performances I was glad when their character died. At least their role as a newly made corpse was believable. That doesn’t mean all the actors were bad. Some of them I actually was hoping would survive but, if there’s one thing you know about horror movies, not everyone you like will survive. To be honest, maybe none of the people you like will survive.
Then there’s the music. Club music should have no place in a horror movie, unless it takes a trip into a club. It doesn’t work outside of that circumstance, and to be frank, rarely works in general in horror film. There is still some good horror music that works well, but some of the music is just garbage.
Even with its flaws, this remake is great, and can be unsettling on occasion. While it would’ve been better to have a little more coverage of the first one, since everyone forgets that Mrs. Vorhees was the original killer, it would’ve made more sense. This is more a remake for the fans that have seen every movie in the series at least three times, and know the background since it cuts out so much.