The most famous visual of Friday the 13th is Jason Voorhees in a hockey mask. But Jason wasn’t the villain until Part 2, and the hockey mask came in on the third installment. These are not the hallmarks of a well-thought-out entertainment.
Buy Friday the 13th (2009) 4K UHDWhich makes sense because Friday the 13th was a rip-off series. “Halloween” was taken, so director Sean Cunningham wanted to get his own murders going on his own significant date. Which is fine, except the original film is limp and lame, with some decent make-up work and no story. There’s a good jump scare at the end. Some of the follow-ups add some interest (and appropriately low-grade sleaze) but this is not a good series of films.
So, I feel no trepidation in saying that the 2009 remake, which is mediocre at best, is better entertainment than the original film. It has a lot of problems, and perhaps makes no sense. But it’s better produced, better acted, and occasionally raises some actual pathos… despite being pretty mediocre.
The first few minutes are a remake of the first film in microcosm, and then the next 20 minutes are essentially the second film, with more marijuana harvesting and dumb dialog. This results in the disappearance of Whitney (Amanda Righetti.) That sparks her brother Clay (Jared Padalecki) to search for her. At the same time, another group of teens goes near Crystal Lake. Jason is not impressed.
This remake is a couple of films in parallel. There’s the mystery of the missing girl, which has Clay and one of the visitors, Jenna (Dannielle Pannabacker), concerned. Then there’s the other characters, victims, who are killed off by Jason because… He’s in a movie?
Seriously, the motivation for Jason in this film is completely fathomless. Michael Myers killed because he was trying to recreate his monstrous childhood Halloween. Freddie Kruger killed for revenge. Jason (2009) kills because the script tells him too. None of his motivations are clear. An old neighbor says he wants to be left alone. Well… he could do that by staying home.
Still, I found the film entertaining. It doesn’t have the grit of the original, but it has much better acting. Padalecki is basically just playing his Supernatural character here, but I like Sam, so that’s not a problem. It is also fitting, because a lot of the cinematography and lighting would have fit in on the WB. Or the CW, depending on how old you are.
The 4K release looks great. Happily, both the theatrical and the “Killer Cut” have been released in 4K. The film looks surprisingly good, despite some early scenes that seemed high-key and flatly lit – the CW look I mentioned. And both the theatrical edition and the “killer” cut are present in 4K on this release.
It did reasonably well at the box office, but legal wranglings are keeping any new little Jason kills from reaching the screen. But this could be a fitting swan song to the series, divesting Jason of the supernatural baggage that was fun but increasingly ridiculous as the series went on. Still not great, Friday the 13th is at least pretty good, and this is as good a home release of the film as one could expect.
Friday the 13th has been released on 4K by Arrow Video. This two-disc release contains two cuts of the movie, both on 4K – the theatrical cut and the “Killer Cut” with more violence and nudity.
On the theatrical cut, there are two commentary tracks, one by director Marcus Nispel, and one by writers Mark Swift and Damian Shannon. Both are new to this release. Also new are video interviews with Marcus Nispel (29 min), Mark Swift and Damian Shannon (37 min), and Daniel Pearl (23 min.) There’s a video extra about remakes, “A Killer New Beginning” (19 min). There are also archival extras from previous releases: “Excerpts from the Terror Trivia Track” (43 min), “The Rebirth of Jason Vorhees” (11 min), “Hacking Back/Slashing Forward” (12 min), “The 7 Best Kills” (23 min), and deleted scenes (8 min.) There are also promo materials.
The Killer Cut disc only includes an audio commentary by film critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson.
