Jeff's Review of Friday the 13th XXVVIII

I've never been an aficiando of horror movies, my brother made me watch them and if he didn't, I probably would have never seen a single Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street to this day. Steve had (has?) a special hard-on for Freddy but Jason never got left behind. The last one we watched was probably Jason Takes Manhattan, which sucked balls, because he only took Manhattan for pretty much the last 20 minutes of the movie. However, he did knock a guy's head off in one punch and nothin-but-netted it into a garbage can.

Jason wasn't truly scary to me until he came back as a zombie through some wierd mojo and as he got slashed and hacked, he would then be missing certain body chunks in the following films, which was kind of neat. The part that made him scarier after the resurrection was that he was an unstoppable force walking around thinking nothing but "Kill it!".

I, and the world, wrote this series off when Jason's soul was jumping from person to person and the 'zombies' were eating people's hearts to keep him alive...I don't understand it either, but it happened. Due to this write-off, I have yet to see Freddy vs. Jason, which I actually do intend to watch as I hear that, despite being silly, it's not a bad slobber-knocker.

I did see Jason X on the space ship but my brain decided to erase it so I actually don't remember anything aside the fact that I watched it, and that's probably enough.

Anyway, be warned, this 'review' will be chock-full or spoilers but since it's a Friday the 13th film, I don't think you're going for the plot anyway so read on, if you dare...

The 1st twenty minutes of this movie could have been the whole movie and I would have walked out satisfied. A quick re-do of Jason's mother's death sets up the Crysal Lake mythos in a nice minute and a half. Cool, I get it, time for murder-death-kill.
A group of teens are walking into the woods, talking to eachother as if their dialogue were being read as they spoke (classic F13? Yes). Seems they're on the hunt for some Crystal Lake pot, which has a very special curator (though it will be to some debate to horror-nerds whether this is actually Jason's pot or just happens to grow nearby as it's never officially established). In any case, they get too close and piss Jason off. He checks out the scene and thinks of some clever ways to kill them off. Oh, and there's boobies. After much killing and a few boobies, we get the title screen, now the movie begins!

One of the pot girls looks a lot like Jason's mommy, who I guess he has a hard-on for and keeps her as a souvenir. Good thing she's not dead because her brother is riding through town for the billionth time in the last month looking for her. Despite the fact that he's been there looking for her before, so much that the sherriff knows him by name, he later mentions he has yet to try looking on the opposite side of the lake. Not exactly detective material. He ends up meeting up with a truck full of douchebags and their hot girlfriends which makes the viewer think "Hey movie, kill those douchebags and show me those titties", to which the movie responds, "Okeedokee".

Speaking of douchebags, when Graham and I saw the film, there was some douchebags in our row talking through the whole thing. Graham gave them the evil eye. There was another douchebag a few rows up who took a phone call mid-movie! Well, that was the last straw for Graham who turned and yelled "Get off your phone! What the fuck!", to no avail, the man had to get yelled at my our same-row talkers (ironically) before finally...continuing to talk on the phone. But we couldn't hear him any longer so who cares.

Anyhoo, the majority of the movie takes place in two locations, Captain Douchebag's cabin and Jason's Crystal Lake township. You do see each kill coming, but Jason never simply kills someone, there is always some cool weapon used or just something nearby that could impale someone, most often a 3 foot long machete (which, when injected into a females head it embeds itself so tightly, you must show her boobies to get it out again).

Basically, you get what you came for and all this boils down to is, is this a good re-start for the series? I would say, yes it is. It updates things just enough. There are certainly a few flaws, the only one that really is kind of 'what?' is that Jason finds his famous hockey mask only coincidentally just after his original mask of a bag gets torn up. Kind of a throwaway for something so important to his image. Graham (who I saw the film with) also pointed out some poor foreshadowing, there is a buzzsaw in the shed that is shown not once but twice, making you go "ooh, what's gonna happen"...and it never gets used! Rip! Jason is also a full-on human again...or is he? There is a hinting line in the film that after Jason drowned and his mother went on a rampage...Jason came back. Hinting that if he died once, he can come back from death again! Good news, considering the best thing about these films is how the heroes always find a way to kill Jason at the end. This movie proves that the old formula works and you don't need to put Jason on a spaceship just because we've seen him kill at a camp before.