(Slight spoilers, though nothing major. Hell, the whole rotten movie is a "spoiler")
Upon viewing the opening third of this movie, I swear I thought the film had been written by Peter and Bobby Farrelly (the talentless brothers behind such pieces of dung such as THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, and ME, MYSELF, AND IRENE) because the film assaulted the audience with embarrassingly crude, off-color, profanity-ridden dialogue.
The film also stoops to presenting distressingly stereotypical characters, including blatantly adding the token black guy and the token Asian guy and then tries to poke fun at it! ("Just because I'm black, that mean I can't listen to Green Day?") The film didn't get any better from there.
As a longtime, die-hard Friday fan, I cringed as I watched the filmmakers completely destroy the myth and character of Jason Voorhees by turning him into a psycho, inbred redneck -- directly out of the Texas CHAINSAW series (directed by an individual who directed the crappy remake of that, and using actors from that remake too!). Absurd was the plot point of Jason holding the girl hostage (for reasons that were never truly made clear)-- since when has Jason EVER done anything like that? Oh right, we're making him into Leatherface now.
The lighting was awful, the kills were mostly too fast and too dark to be enjoyed, Derek Mears was OK but unremarkable as Jason. I'll credit him for doing the best with the sickeningly bad material he had to work with.
Worst of all, the film tries to have it both ways -- it tries to create a scary Jason, but makes the characters so repugnantly unappealing that the audience is rooting for Jason. You can't have your cake and eat it too: either have a scary Jason that we're rooting against because he's the villain, or portray him as the (anti)hero who's there to wipe out teenage scum. Not both.
A couple good touches, such as the topless skiing scene (even though that didn't show off what it could've) and the ax kill (now THAT was pure Jason) can even begin to save this pile of sludge. But I'm sure we'll have another awful remake (or sequel to a remake), since this crap hit it big at the box office.
Grade Z tripe.
Upon viewing the opening third of this movie, I swear I thought the film had been written by Peter and Bobby Farrelly (the talentless brothers behind such pieces of dung such as THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, and ME, MYSELF, AND IRENE) because the film assaulted the audience with embarrassingly crude, off-color, profanity-ridden dialogue.
The film also stoops to presenting distressingly stereotypical characters, including blatantly adding the token black guy and the token Asian guy and then tries to poke fun at it! ("Just because I'm black, that mean I can't listen to Green Day?") The film didn't get any better from there.
As a longtime, die-hard Friday fan, I cringed as I watched the filmmakers completely destroy the myth and character of Jason Voorhees by turning him into a psycho, inbred redneck -- directly out of the Texas CHAINSAW series (directed by an individual who directed the crappy remake of that, and using actors from that remake too!). Absurd was the plot point of Jason holding the girl hostage (for reasons that were never truly made clear)-- since when has Jason EVER done anything like that? Oh right, we're making him into Leatherface now.
The lighting was awful, the kills were mostly too fast and too dark to be enjoyed, Derek Mears was OK but unremarkable as Jason. I'll credit him for doing the best with the sickeningly bad material he had to work with.
Worst of all, the film tries to have it both ways -- it tries to create a scary Jason, but makes the characters so repugnantly unappealing that the audience is rooting for Jason. You can't have your cake and eat it too: either have a scary Jason that we're rooting against because he's the villain, or portray him as the (anti)hero who's there to wipe out teenage scum. Not both.
A couple good touches, such as the topless skiing scene (even though that didn't show off what it could've) and the ax kill (now THAT was pure Jason) can even begin to save this pile of sludge. But I'm sure we'll have another awful remake (or sequel to a remake), since this crap hit it big at the box office.
Grade Z tripe.