Jun
13
The twelfth “Friday the 13th” film is currently in production and set for a February 2009 release. It’s not a direct sequel to the previous films, but the continuity of the franchise has been a little screwy since the very first chapter. Michael Bay’s producing and will doubtless deliver a Botoxed, fake-and-bake remake of the first three or four films.
“Friday the 13th” happens to be my favorite horror franchise. There’s no one film in the series that’s so bad, it’s unwatchable, something that cannot be said for either the “Halloween” or the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series. Indeed, the “Friday the 13th” films are all over the place in terms of quality. But I find myself revisiting each one about equally. I can’t even say that about every film in my James Bond collection.
Jason Voorhees wasn’t always a hockey-masked killer. In movie one, he’s simply a plot device to motivate his mother’s own murder spree at Camp Crystal Lake, but he does provide the cheapest and the best scare at the end of the film. The first sequel casts Jason as a clumsy and inexperienced slasher with a burlap sack over his head. It isn’t until part three that he finally puts on the iconic hockey mask during his murderous rampage. He’s “killed” in the fourth film, part five has an unlikely Jason imposter (a paramedic!), and six through eight feature a reanimated “Zombie Jason.”
New Line Cinema acquired the rights to the franchise from Paramount in the early-’90s and released three more non-canonical films: “Jason Goes to Hell,” “Jason X” and “Freddy vs. Jason.” They don’t fit within the continuity of the Paramount releases, nor do they even make sense as a self-contained trilogy. Jason goes to hell, then space and ultimately to Elm Street.
I’m not sure what to make of this new “Friday the 13th” film. If anyone can suck all the fun out of a splatter movie franchise, it’s Michael friggin’ Bay. He’s more interested in cashing in on a brand name — like with his boring and fugly “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake and subseqent prequel (requel?) — than cranking out a flick worthy of its well known title. To date, no one’s been able to vanquish Jason Voorhees. But Michael Bay’s the kind of hack who might just be the slasher’s match.
-Brad Lohan
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[…] lamented a couple months back that Michael Bay’s soulless remake machine, Platinum Dunes, was giving Jason the “Batman Begins”/”Casino Royale” treatment. That they felt the mythology of the “Friday the 13th” saga needed to be rebooted sort […]