Tuesday 24 January 2012

Friday the 13th (2009)

Home
Smell the Movies
Smell the TV

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:2009
Country of origin:USA
Director:Marcus 'what a wanker' Nispel
Genre:Pathetic slasher remake
Starring:A bunch of fuckers
Rating:1/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758746/
Tagline:Prepare for the day everyone fears...
Favourite line:None worth mentioning

Remember the good old days?
Eh?
When horror was either about atmosphere or campy silliness.
When you could go into your local video store and tell from the cover whether you were going to like a movie or not.
When the aim of every horror film was not simply to be more nasty than the last one and when, here's a thought, the genre didn't take itself so damned seriously.
See, Friday the 13th was a slasher film. And not a particularly classy one, being a fairly transparent attempt to cash in on the phenomenal success of Carpenter's Halloween. But it was a whole lot of fun.
Parts 1 and 2 are good, with part 3 being a genuine slasher classic, as Jason dons the hockey mask for the first time (Jason wasn't the killer in part 1, and in part 2 he wore an old sack over his head to hide his identity, just so you know) and sets about trying to kill everyone Corey Feldman holds dear. Indeed, the Feldman "Die, die, die" sequence is something quite remarkable to behold. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpUJqXud9zI
Sure, after that the franchise went on an inexorable slide into hideous awfulness, but let's not dwell on that.
Now, some 29 years after the release of the original, the dreaded remake and, horror upon horror, it's exec. produced by that cinematic shit-sprayer Michael Bay.

The plot:
In a series of flashbacks, movies 1 and 2 are dealt with so, within five minutes, Jason has the mask and within twenty, he's dispatched a whole gaggle of teenage types.
Skip to present day, and another bunch of imbeciles rock up at Camp Crystal Lake for some weed and booze and sex related hi jinx only to be picked off one by one.

All very much as we would expect, then.
But there's one massive issue here.
It's utterly, utterly shit.
I mean, inexcusably so.
Director Marcus Nispel, the hack behind the Texas Chainsaw remake and the Conan the Barbarian remake - see the pattern? What a wanker - delivers something so dreadfully lifeless, no matter the pain and misery inflicted on the mobile planks of wood on screen, you really won't give a damn one way or the other.
The colour palette selected by the Nispel moron is a hideous combination of greens and browns, all muddied together so that you can barely see a fucking thing that's happening Worse, the whole format is warped. By seeing the events of part 2 played out in flashback, then starting the movie proper, he's just repeating himself. Now, admittedly the original movies were pretty repetitive, but at least they were self-contained dullathons, and didn't echo in some grotesque feedback loop within their own runtime.
This does.
Deliberately.
With more gore in the first twenty minutes than the original three movies managed combined, the objective here is plain: throw some blood at the camera to hide the woeful lack of atmosphere and soul.
Anyone who tells you this is any good really understands nothing at all about horror, and really should have their eyes gouged out for their own good. They clearly don't need them. Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, I hate you and everything that you stand for.
Please. Just. Stop.

No comments:

Post a Comment