Director: Marcus Nispel
Screenwriters: Damian Shannon and Mark Swift
Story Writers: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, and Mark Wheaton
Starring: Jared Padalecki, Amanda Righetti, and Derek Mears
(Original Movie Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Original Writers: Victor Mill and Ron Kurz)
All of my DVD's are packed up in boxes, so for the next couple weeks I will have to rely on taking chances with free movies on On Demand. Hopefully I get lucky and choose some good ones in the future, because tonight I put on something so terrible I just had to end the torture. To avoid further disappointment tonight, I put on the remake of Friday the 13th. I watched this once when it first came out and I don't recall being wowed by it, but do remember it being scary.
Out of these types of classic horror films, this was probably my least favorite because it was the most unrealistic. Even Nightmare On Elm Street was influenced by a true horror. I believe it was a while ago in Japan, where dead students were found after complaining about something disturbing them while they slept. They were so petrified that they resorted to hiding coffee machines in their closets in order to stay awake. Knock on wood, but I don't really know of any true stories where a child dies and comes back from the dead as an enormous, masked maniac.
I did enjoy the opening scene of a reenactment from the original. I appreciate how the story meshes the traditional rules with modernized originality, although I wish they used the original theme music more. My favorite scene is the first kill. One of the victims stumbles across the marijuana plants the group is planning on taking. As he is indulging in their orgasmic scent, Jason appears. I remember jumping in the movie theater. I was so distracted, I completely forgot it was a horror movie for a second! I kind of dig the "long intro" during the first fifteen minutes, although I was not fond of it the first time I watched it.
I also totally dig the death scenes with the boat. I thought the arrows were a tricky and suspenseful way to deliver death. I also thought the boat running the girl over was a cool effect to shoot into the mix, but the boobie shot there really made me chuckle. You especially see this "rating trick" in most horror movies. There are always boobs that just pop out with irrelevance to the story. Even the original Halloween has a classic breast shot. This is usually something the creators do not only to attract and satisfy viewers of the sexual desires, but also to kick their rating up a notch. It's a good way to guarantee an R-rating.
All you can really expect and hope for with recently made horror movies is that they scare the shit out of you while being careful not to overindulge in the use of blood to the extent of it screaming fabrication. It's rather unlikely you find a scary movie that intertwines the gore and violence with strong character backgrounds and a suspenseful and twisted story line. Typically you get one or the other. One of my goals in life is to pull a Tarantino by creating a new generation of film for the horror genre.
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