Jason Vorhees

Three Fridays: A Comparison of ‘Friday the 13th’ – Part 2

/ Imperfect Glass / 2 Comments

When I finished taking a look at the original ‘Friday the 13th’ last week, I hoped that the 2009 remake would offer a new twist or angle on the story, or perhaps a new idea that would add to the Jason mythos. And at first glance, it sounded like the movie had everything going for it: a bigger budget, a bigger scope, and including elements from the first few films. Thus, with the disappointment of the original still fresh in my mind, I started the remake, hopeful that I’d get a more exciting version of Jason’s origins.

After a very quick recap of Pamela’s attempt to kill horny teenagers at Camp Crystal Lake, ’13th’ wastes no time in getting to the basics: young adults head out to a remote lake, get drunk, get high, get naked, have premarital sex, and die at Jason’s hands. A familiar formula, but it isn’t a bad thing. I was impressed at how quickly the film got to the killing, and it was quickly made clear that Jason doesn’t mess around: in the span of a few minutes, he wipes out everyone in the small group of horny, drug-seeking young adults in gruesome fashion, including bear traps, machetes, and a particularly horrible, drawn-out death for an unfortunate young woman in a sleeping bag.

And then the opening title appeared; I had been so sucked into the opening act that I was shocked to realize that the film hadn’t even started yet! Now excited, I watched as the movie started up, glad to see that things were going well.

An hour and a half later, I watched the end credits, crushed at being disappointed once again.

As a modern remake and reboot for the Friday the 13th series, ‘Friday’ is a return to the classic elements of the franchise: Camp Crystal Lake, Jason killing with his machete, and his eventual defeat at the hands of a lone, young woman, all in an attempt to leave behind the over-the-top silliness that the franchise became known for, culminating in Jason’s trip to outer space, and facing off against Freddy Kruger. A little housecleaning isn’t a bad move in and of itself: When a series heads back to its roots, it’s a chance for a clean start, and to introduce the series to new fans while honoring what came before and keeping series traditions for the returning fans.

Sadly, however, ‘Friday’s attempts to strip away the over-the-top elements of the franchise also takes away much of what made Jason memorable. Yes, he may have become ridiculous in his later outings, but a demonically-possessed, cyborg zombie Jason is far more interesting to watch, especially when he uses his superhuman durability and strength to perform wildly inventive kills. But by removing the silliness and Jason’s enhanced abilities, ‘Friday’ unfortunately turns itself into a routine slasher movie. As with the original, if we were to take away Jason and Camp Crystal Lake, there would be little left to distinguish itself from its peers: Most of the kills – which revolve around being stabbed, slashed, and impaled with a machete, shot with an arrow, or being stabbed with various items – feel routine and unimaginative (with the exception of the aforementioned sleeping bag kill). The story feels routine, and aside from his new ability to run, Jason himself feels like almost any other slasher villain in hundreds of other horror movies: Just a normal man in a mask who’s strong and tough to kill.

When the credits were rolling, I was struck by how I had to focus to recall any memorable moments that stuck with me, those, ‘that was so cool!’ scenes that we love sharing with our friends later on. To my surprise, the only thing that stuck with me was that I like how the main character, Clay, is a person with a strong, believable reason to go to the hunting grounds of a serial killer (he’s looking for his missing sister), and that, even better, he manages to find and rescue her… until Jason bursts out of the lake at the end of the movie, presumably killing her, and making his whole quest pointless.

While I was hopeful that the 2009 remake of ‘Friday’ would correct the mistakes of its predecessor, I was disappointed to find that it was little more than your typical horror flick, one that happened to have Jason Voorhees in it. It did have a faster pace, more action, more kills, and more of everything to keep our attention (I didn’t fast-forward through it), but there was nothing particularly memorable about it.

But not all is lost; there exists one more version of Friday the 13th, a fan-made version that, in my opinion, tells the best version of Jason’s origin story. Come back next week, where we’ll take a look at this adaptation, which isn’t what you’d expect.

 

Three Fridays: A Comparison of ‘Friday the 13th’ – Part 1

/ Imperfect Glass / 3 Comments

When it comes to horror franchises, few are as well known as Friday the 13th. Created in 1980, this series has gone on to include twelve films, countless books, comics, action figures, and video games, not to mention spawning the legendary Jason Vorhees, who remains one of cinema’s most famous slasher villains, with over two hundred (!) kills to his name.

Yet, even with its prestigious history, I’ve never sat down to watch all the films, the one exception being ‘Freddy vs Jason.’ I thought it was a fun film, but it didn’t get me interested in watching the rest of Jason’s filmography. All that changed, though, when I took a look at a recent, fan-made interpretation of the 1980 film, which made me curious to see how it fared to both the original, and the 2009 remake, leading to the rare scenario of being able to see the same story being told three different ways.

For the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a look at all three interpretations: The 1980 original, the 2009 remake, and a 2019 fan-made version that I’ll keep a secret for now. If you haven’t seen the original film, I’d recommend not reading any further until you have, as this series will spoil major plot details.

With all that said, let’s begin with the film that started it all: 1980’s, ‘Friday the 13th’

As said so memorably in 1962’s ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and 2012’s, ‘Prometheus,’ “Big things have small beginnings,” perfectly sums up Jason’s first big-screen outing, a small-scale slasher flick that finds camp counselors facing certain death when stranded at a small summer camp in a remote forest. Thanks to pop-culture osmosis, I knew all the twists before watching the film: that Jason is barely in the film, that his mother is the killer, and that everyone but one girl dies. Still, knowing the plot before seeing a movie isn’t always going to ruin it: I knew how ‘Alien’ and ‘The Shining’ turned out before watching them, and they were still scary, effective films that became personal favorites.

I’m afraid the same can’t be said for ‘Friday.’

For all the praise put upon it as one of the best films in the series (or the best, depending on who you’re talking to), I found ‘Friday’ to be surprisingly dull. It gets off to a good start, with a camp counselor named Annie heading off to Camp Crystal Lake…  only to be killed before she even reaches the front gate. Killing off who you think is going to be the main character in the first act is a great way to suck people in, and I was eager to see how the film went from there. Regrettably, I was disappointed that ‘Friday’ follows the standard trope of building up doomed teenagers before killing them off in an isolated location. There’s nothing wrong with that (and Crystal Lake at night in a thunderstorm is an effective horror setting), but the film’s glacial pace results in numerous periods of boredom, to the point where I even fast-forwarded to get to the inevitable killings, which are quite tame compared to what came later in the series (the arrow-through-the-throat kill is quite memorable, though).

While ‘Friday’ was mostly a disappointment for me, it does have one element that saves it from the pile of over-hyped movies: Pamela Vorhees, Jason’s mother. At first glance, a middle-aged woman with no fighting skills or unique abilities doesn’t sound like a compelling villain, but Pamela elevates herself with one of the most sympathetic backstories to be found in slasher cinema: A mother who lost her only child due to negligence, who is driven by unimaginable pain to get revenge on those who let him die, and stop other children from suffering the fate her son did. I can think of few other killers in cinema who are so sympathetically evil; Pamela’s so easy to relate to, even if we don’t agree with her killing innocent counselors who had nothing to do with Jason’s death. And to twist the knife even further, the revelation that Jason is still alive means that all her killings and her twisted quest for justice was all for nothing, turning the film into a tragedy where nobody wins, nobody gets justice, and all the suffering everyone goes through was for nothing.

Wow.

When looking at ‘Friday’, both as the start of a franchise, and as a standalone movie, it’s my opinion that it isn’t very good. If it was removed from the ‘Friday’ franchise and stripped of it’s historical status, ‘Friday’ would probably be remembered as a rather standard slasher film that would struggle to stand out among its peers. Still, Pamela’s effective performance saves ‘Friday’ from being a complete disappointment.

While ‘Friday’ isn’t a good film, in my opinion, it does deserve to be recognized for its villain, and for starting one of the most famous slasher franchises in history… well, that, and the hilarity of knowing that Pamela’s little boy will one day blast off into outer space and hack people to death on a space station as an undead demonic cyborg.

Tune in next week, where we’ll take a look at the 2009 remake of ‘Friday’ and see what a modern-day take on Jason’s origin has to offer.