From the Friday the 13th Oregonian....
I suppose the fanboy purist in me should be "outraged" that producer Michael Bay is ignoring continuity and rebooting "Friday the 13th," much like he rebooted the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" series. But Jason has been left out of a "Friday" movie entirely (Part V); resurrected by lightning bolts (Part VI), psychic powers (Part VII) and underwater electric cables (Part VIII); and sent to Hell (Part IX) and outer space (Part X) before getting in a cage match with Freddy Krueger ("Freddy vs. Jason"). Seriously: What damage could Michael Bay inflict on Jason Voorhees that earlier producers hadn't already inflicted on everyone's favorite hockey-masked serial killer?
Well, unfortunately, Michael Bay could make Jason Voorhees really, really boring.
"Friday the 13th" (2009) cherry-picks elements from the first three films in the series and remixes them in the blandest way possible. The filmmakers try to strip the Jason concept down to its essence, but end up making the mayhem generic: The movie's full of blandly pretty people having bland conversations and even blander sex before they're blandly slashed by Jason in bland environments using bland stabbing tools. And there's a bland missing-sister subplot that feels like a bland studio note ("Does she HAVE to be dead?").
Let's face it: These flicks are only as good as their kills are creative. But in several instances, the team behind "Friday" '09 can't even be bothered to edit the kills so you can see them. Go rent the one where Jason takes Manhattan, or something.
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C-minus; 97 minutes; rated R for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, language and drug material.
'Friday the 13th' (The Oregonian, Friday the 13th, 2009)
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