At what point did they turn into laughing stocks? I’m sure somewhere there is a support group where Jason Voorhees, Chucky and other erstwhile-imposing legends of gore purge their feelings of inadequacy. The original Friday the 13th is a good movie. Child’s Play is anything but child’s play. Hallowe’en is no laughing matter, and Nightmare on Elm St. still keeps the kiddies up at night. But something happened along the way. The genuine thrills elicited by these horror icons turned into laughter, and before long, the word “irony” was being haphazardly tossed about. Was it the endless flow of sequels -- with their 3-D glasses, make-up amendments, and other lame attempts to “refresh” the series -- that saturated the genre, turning what was once an original film into the first in a long line of insipid plot regurgitations? Are we too jaded to suspend our disbelief of monsters, figuring, in these economically troubled times, stock prices are frightening enough?

It’s no wonder, then, that studios have revisited the franchises with a back-to-basics mentality. In the case of the new Friday the 13th, the studios have gone one step further by appointing as co-executive producer Sean S. Cunningham who, among other things, was the director of the original 1980 film.

Now, with the original visionary on board to assist director Marcus Nispel, who cut his teeth resurrecting horror classics with 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, do we have a recipe for success?

We’ll get to that. First, the plot…

The film transcends its predecessors by focusing on not one, but TWO groups of teenagers making the pilgrimage to the now-defunct Camp Crystal Lake for some booze-soakin, drug-tokin’ good times. When the first group “disappears”, it’s up to Jared Padalecki to search the area for his missing sister and her friends. Along his zany trails he encounters the second group, a similar slew of sexy 17-year-olds who systematically get slain by Jason. While the film could have benefitted from a hint of variety by portraying the teens as, say, heroin junkies, thereby negating the belief that every teenager exalts the almighty bong as some sort of deity, I can’t really criticize the set-up. This is a Friday the 13th flick afterall.

What I can criticize is the director’s treatment of the set-up. Granted, the kill scenes are more intense, the sex scenes more explicit, and the drug scenes more light-hearted, but ultimately, what you have is just, well… more. The studio wanted to wipe the slate clean and start the series anew but really, I just don’t understand what it accomplished that it couldn’t have accomplished by producing another sequel. The film isn’t a retelling of the original film; Mrs. Voorhees plays merely a periphery role, adding a bit of context to the affairs. So why did they make this movie?

Perhaps it’s the manner in which Jason became a laughing stock. The series stopped being scary when Jason became some otherworldly demon bent on killing anything and everything. The first two films in the series asserted there was a method to the madness, that Mrs. Voorhees only killed those camp councillors who neglected to save her son from drowning. Part two, then, had Jason kill to avenge his mother’s demise. Once Jason started coming back and back and back from the dead, audiences stopped feeling threatened. A deformed homicidal maniac is believable; an everlasting mutant who knows no pain is not.

So is this new Friday the 13th a success? I’m afraid not. Forgive me for having high hopes for this one but the mythos that surrounds Camp Crystal Lake is just begging to be explored and I don’t think the creative team even bothered to try. I’m sure the film will be successful financially, perhaps for the same reason that I’m condemning it. But don’t be fooled: there’s nothing new to see here. Apparently it’s true: Once you’ve seen one Friday the 13th: Part 1, you’ve seen them all.

-Gavin Crisp