Friday the 13th

However, this film is (be)head and shoulders above the recently reanimated likes of "Prom Night" and "My Bloody Valentine."

It's not an openly meta take on the genre like "Scream," but it's a slasher movie for people who love slasher movies, and if your heart will flutter when a woodchipper casually appears in the first act, it's probably worth watching.

Nispel is no Rob Zombie - who achieved something akin to brilliance with his 2007 Halloween remake. What's more, as influential as it's been, Friday the 13th was never that great.

The question isn't whether Nispel's remake is better than the 1980 original (it isn't) but whether anything original is brought into the mix. And minus a mild plot twist you"ll probably see coming from the first five minutes, there isn't.

If all you're looking for is breasts, blood, and gore, this film hits pay dirt. None of the killings are terribly inventive, but they are plentiful, and why bother being devious when axes, machetes, knives, and pointed sticks will do the job just as well?

It's almost charming in its sheer lack of ambition, but the lack of creativity in its by-the-numbers shocks is harder to excuse.

But bad, this film's so bad! To flub the fans' most beloved butcher boy.

So it's not everyone's cup of tea, it' not the best story line, but it is rememberable... Jason Voohees has got to be one of the best horror characters ever invented! It's genius, it's legendary, it's Friday The 13th!

It's a normal slasher films with a higher budget and somewhat likable characters. That alone makes it one of the better movies in the franchise.

This is a horror film, the fun from the previous films is gone, also gone is the b-movie aspect as this is a high quality production and because of all this some of the charm is gone. That’s not to say it isn’t a good film as it is good but I can see why they didn’t make a sequel. There is enough fan service without it being overwhelming, the film hits all the right beats. I did like the shaky camera. It’s a very solid horror but it doesn’t feel like a Friday the 13th film. There is no supernatural and I’m fine with that but would have preferred a sequel rather than a remake of the first 4 films. The lighting is almost too perfect. The characters are unlikeable but that’s okay. There are some good jump scares and it has a great climax. Overall it’s entertaining but not my favourite in the franchise and feels very different to the others.

'Friday the 13th' may have been panned by critics when first released but since then it is one of the most famous and influential horror films, the franchise containing one of horror's most iconic villains. The film is popular enough to become a franchise and spawn several sequels of varying quality and generally inferior to the one that started it all off. It is very easy to call the 2009 'Friday the 13th' as a remake, for reasons that are easy to understand. Personally am actually to judge 'Friday the 13th' (2009) as a reboot rather than a remake. While not quite as bad as has been said, it even fails by reboot standards. There was no point to it whatsoever, the series should just have stopped at the last sequel and even then the series was severely fatigued, the fifth or sixth for me was the last watchable 'Friday the 13th' film, and there is very little to recommend it judging it as an overall film. Entries like 'Jason Takes Manhattan' and 'Jason X' may have been heavily problematic and less than mediocre, but credit is due to them for trying to do something different. 'Friday the 13th' (2009) has very few ideas of its own and the very few attempted were either cheaply executed (such as an out of character Jason), felt like they were lifted from another film (too many of the deaths are sadistic enough to be near-'Saw' territory) and more horror genre clichés done to death. The story is suggestive of the series being completely stale and takes forever to get going after the first 20 minutes, with very little happening and with a lot of gratuitous, cheap and pointless elements. Apart from one respectable performance, the acting is horrendous even by 'Friday the 13th' standards, the characters are ones you want dead fast and have nothing interesting about them and the dialogue would likely make even more forgiving people embarrassed. The ending is far too abrupt and anti-climactic, as well as going too far with the ridiculousness. Very few of the deaths are that memorable or disturbing, they're just too sadistic and paced too fast to make much impact. There is a severe shortage of suspense and scares, next to zero in both departments past the opening, replaced instead by childish humour and an overdose of gore, nudity and profanity that adds nothing. Pacing is erratic and the direction is often lifeless, especially in most of the first half. Can remember very little distinguished or memorable about the music, mostly one of the series' best assets now completely forgettable here. Despite these many drawbacks, there are positives. The first 20 minutes were absolutely great, it was tense, scary, clever, suspenseful and compelling. It actually gave the feeling that the series had redeemed itself. Technically, apart from some slapdash MTV-like editing that just didn't belong the production values were stylish and atmospheric. Although no Kane Hodder, Derek Mears is a wholly respectable and imposingly unsettling Jason. Overall, started off so well and then went downhill like water down the plughole. 3/10 Bethany Cox

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]