Do horror movies work when the monsters are no longer horrifying? I would argue for the negative, although Jason Voorhees’ fans, who cheered his very appearance in the rebooted Friday the 13th, would argue in the other direction. In their twisted worlds the machete-wielding murderer would have been knighted by now — Sir Jason, Lord of the Welsh Farthing, cousin of the Duke of Westerly. Sainthood would not be far behind.
In any case, Jason is no longer a villain to his core audience; he’s decidedly blue-collar. Horrors don’t work when audiences cheer for the bad guy, especially since great pains are undertaken to introduce good guys, in this case (and in all cases for Friday the 13th movies) hormonal teens screwing around near Camp Crystal Lake, the site of some grisly murders decades back. So they have two-track minds (drugs and intercourse), but the movie requires us to care for their well-being, otherwise the scares don’t work because the victims might as well be ottomans in an Ikea display, just meaningless things.
In the original Friday the 13th from 1980 — way before Jason went to Manhattan, Hell and space (in that order) — Jason’s mother was the bloodthirsty killer; she sought revenge against the camp counselors that let her little boy die in the lake while they were playing naked Twister in the bushes somewhere between the archery range and the whittling den. Jason and his hockey mask didn’t actually appear until Friday the 13th Part II. With the remake, the original movie’s entire plot has been relegated to the opening credits, ending with Mrs. Voorhees’ head being separated from her neck in a method not recommended by most doctors. And that’s where this one picks up, basically at Part II.
It’s been untold decades since the Camp Crystal Lake murders, and the camp, totem poles and all, is overgrown and rotting by the festering marsh they call a lake. College kids searching for a hidden field of marijuana stumble into the camp and find Jason, who hacks up all of them save for one that he wraps in her sleeping bag and barbecues alive. Six weeks later another group of college kids venture into town to party at a rich father’s cabin. They also trespass on Jason’s right-of-way and meet grisly ends. The movie is a series of encounters with Jason, who has to one-up only himself on torture and killing devices — from screwdrivers and elk antlers to the machete that severed his own mother’s head, an implement that proves 98 percent of Freud’s theories true.
This time around, though, the hulking and massive Jason, who was a supernatural force in the original series, is rebooted as a severely disabled (and semi-mortal) orphan, who probably doesn’t understand the concept of his mother’s death. With Jason’s newfound transience from the original series, one gets the impression that with some therapy and some wabbits he might make a convincing Lennie for a production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I liked mortal Jason, and I liked that his behavior could be counted on. He's written with a Norman Bates-like crush on his mother, which would be even more twisted and deranged had he actually vocalized his feelings, but instead he skulks around silently with apparently no will, or mouth, from which to speak. I can see why fans appreciate the Jason character — he's dependable — although I will never understand how he has risen to cult hero status.
The college kids, with their floppy hair, Greek letters and sandals — just asking for some chest ventilating if you ask me — do everything that they’re supposed to do in movies like this: the men use drugs, the women show their breasts, they all wander out in the dark for no reason, they investigate strange noises, they never run faster than Jason can walk … it’s all a very defined routine, like they’re caught in the groove of a record and can’t get out. And the record came out in 1980.
One character, the Funny Asian Guy, doesn’t even have the ironic foresight to laugh when he says, “I’m going to the toolshed and I’ll be right back” … with a hedge trimmer rammed through my ribcage. Then there’s topless water-skier, the Hot Blonde, who is too dense to realize her nakedness just guaranteed her skull-splitting demise. Or the woodchipper operator, who forgot to install the “This Woodchipper Must Be Used As a Weapon In the Climax or Not At All” plaque to his machine's operating panel. Or the Witty Black Guy who acknowledges he's the only black character by making obtuse references to his blackness. Finally there's Girl's Boyfriend, who's like 28 years old but has apparently never had sex before, which is why he tries way too hard to get in the sack with his virginal co-star. That last douchebag has the movie's best line: staring up at a naked girl's chest he says, "Your tits are stupendous." The movie's writers must not have wives or girlfriends, because if they did they'd know better than to call breasts "stupendous" in fear of never seeing another pair again. I'm way off topic, but all these characters and their horrible dialogie are horror-movie clichés and the movie doesn’t even avoid them, or at least poke fun at their expense. It presents them as legitimate developments in a plot it's calling fresh and orginal.
Full-blown aggravation, though, set in when I realized that this could have been a reinvention, not just a remake. Yes, the film needs to acknowledge its roots by setting up dopey twentysomethings like lambs to the slaughter, but here those roots are deified for the faithful fans who expect nothing less. Yes, a remake is a very literal word: the film was made over again, as in re-done, re-filmed, re-examined. But usually such things are done to involve us in more story, better special effects or just something that the original didn’t have. This Friday the 13th lacks nothing that wasn’t in the first franchise. Yes, the mood is scarier, the violence a bit more visceral, and modern cinematography has nailed nighttime photography, but otherwise there’s nothing new that warrants more Jason. It’s frustrating that with so many horror writers working in Hollywood, none could come up with an original premise for the veteran slasher — at this stage even Jason should be bored.
The movie is rebooted by Marcus Nispel, the same guy who rebooted the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. Nispel has done something appalling: he’s remade the two franchises the same way, nearly overlapping them in fact. In both, the villains are large, beastly men who are mentally challenged as well as mentally deranged. Both have signature weapons: Jason uses a machete so large it probably serves no purpose, and Leatherface uses a chainsaw in a part of the Lone Star State where there are no trees. Both films feature run-down houses with macabre shrines made of questionable bone and skin fragments. And both films are nihilist by design, with characters and villains who represent nothing but their own ends. Even the horror feels like black voids of emptiness.
Jason kills out of necessity perhaps, and Leatherface out of dietary requirements, but I can't say they kill for thrills — they're too emotionless and disabled to experience any emotion that might be mistaken for happiness or joy, or even just some kind of bizarre violent perversion. Truth be told, they kill to fulfill the fans' urge for blood, which is why I will never trust the opinions of gore-hounds — their appetites require only blood and every plot they endorse is just a vehicle for more carnage.
The horror genre is desperately waiting for its rebirth. Don’t break out the cigars, though, for Friday the 13th.
The Dark Knight passed into film lore the moment Heath Ledger died. We started a posthumous worship of the actor almost immediately, which is a crass and offensive thing Americans do with dearly departed stars nowadays. Dead or not, though, his performance is legendary, the role we’ll measure all other villains by for decades to come — Darth Vader, Bill the Butcher, The Joker.
But don’t judge the movie on Ledger alone; he’s one cog in a very large and very well-lubricated machine that is The Dark Knight, one of this year’s most densely complex films, as much an epic tragedy as it is a comic-book thrill ride. It's also permeated with a sadness that was unexpected, yet imperative to the scope of the story. All of it, though, is masterful filmmaking, the stuff we’ve come to expect from Christopher Nolan.
We begin with Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Gotham’s new district attorney, a bright ray of hope cresting over the city’s madness. In one day alone Dent, square jaw and all, arrests the mob — all of them. So many that the courtroom arraignment is standing-room only, filled with 500 buttonmen, Mafia lieutenants and all the dons in their expensive suits. While Dent mops up in court, Batman stalks the night and cleans up what the police and district attorney can’t touch. Dent and Batman: the White Knight and the Dark Knight.
Batman and billionaire Bruce Wayne are still played by Christian Bale, whose talents seem limitless. Bale seems more athletic here, which may be in part to a new Batman suit that looks like a super-soldier outfit with a cape and ears. Apparently the suit is more flexible, which allows faster hand-to-hand combat, building extractions, cape soaring and gadget deployment. Bruce is more skeptical of authority inside this Batman, but he sees Dent, who is destined to become the bitter Two-Face, as the logical and legal replacement to his caped crusader. At one point he has Alfred, his wise butler (played with subtle perfection by Michael Caine), draw up retirement papers.
With the pressure on the mob, and Dent beaming from City Hall, the city seems to be heading toward better times, and director Nolan shows us as much with daylight scenes and afternoon camera passes of Gotham’s landmarks; for a while the darkness seems to subside.
Enter the Joker, a nutjob with endless resources and invention. With a maniacal sneer and high-pitched giggle, he’s introduced with a magic trick so audacious it’s as mad as he is. Later when he’s arrested, the cops pull dozens of knives from his pockets while he mocks them with fake applause. In a single day, the Joker has stolen all the mobs’ money, so much that the bills stack up into a fort bigger than most single-family homes. The Joker’s proposition to the mob: Let him eliminate Batman and Dent with their blessing and half their money.
Of course, it all gets much more complex, too much to catalog here, but rest assured that every character — including Bruce Wayne’s ex, Rachel (now played by Maggie Gyllenhaal); Lt. Gordon (Gary Oldman); and engineer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) — figures into it. I wouldn’t call the film a mystery, but it uses all these characters to reveal itself to us in intelligent ways and never all at once. Bruce Wayne’s submersion into the darker edges of Batman’s soul are intricate developments that expand as the Joker takes hold. The film never handles it in broad, obvious scenes. They unfold around us, involving us in the processes of Batman’s sacrifices, of Dent’s fateful redemption, of Joker’s elaborate abduction of the hero’s principles. And not everything is solved with a fistfight; some of it is a moral and philosophical battle, like when Joker rigs two boats to explode but gives the passengers the detonators.
Above presenting an action story, a thriller, a suspense and romance (Bruce is still in love with Rachel), Dark Knight also ponders that good-versus-evil dilemma like no other movie has ever attempted. The mythology of the superhero is turned into a bona fide ethos, an authentic philosophy with real values and moral boundaries. It suggests that maybe Batman is not the hero the city needs or wants, and give him a long enough story arc and he’ll be as bad as the Joker. It also plays with the theme of duality, which is personified completely in Two-Face’s grotesque transformation. It’s complicated material and it’s no walk in the park to be sure. It provides an interesting dynamic with the film’s action, which is intense.
There are numerous chases, brawls and show-stopping gunfights, all of them with surprise conclusions and some interesting ethical dilemmas: Can Batman save two people at once? Will a normal person kill to save his own life? Will a good man go bad for the wrong reasons? For once, here’s a movie where the action punctuates the movie’s themes. The action also introduces us to the new Batman vehicle, the Batpod, which is an ejected piece of the Batmobile. It’s essentially a motorcycle with fat racing tires that Batman cruises around town on, cape flapping in the wind, trying to stop each new Joker disaster. Which leads us to …
The Joker. He’s presented as a lovable loon, but also deadly. In one scene he breaks a pool cue in half and tells three men to fight to the death to fill a slot on his team; in another he phones a detonator surgically implanted in a man’s stomach. Ledger avoided Jack Nicholson’s Joker and went with a more isolated, more psychologically deranged character. His origins are never shown — though he tells his victims a variety of stories about his facial scars — yet he’s given an almost poetic edge that seems to come from deep-seated torment. Watch how he hangs his head outside the window of a car as it swerves through Gotham, listen to his whimsical dialogue filled with nuance and rage, witness his destruction of a hospital while dressed in drag … it’s all kind of silly and goofy, but chilling to a level that’s almost uncomfortable.
And because Nolan has developed his characters so expertly, by the time Batman and Joker meet in an interrogation room it's as if two giants were clashing on the screen, like when Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, after all they'd been through in their careers, finally met for coffee in Heat. Batman seethes and growls from behind his suit, Joker smirks and rubs his fingers through his limp, lifeless hair. It's Clash of the Titans, in comic form.
Will Ledger live up to your expectations? That depends, mainly because fans are putting too much pressure on the deceased actor. He’s practically already won an Academy Award from the movie previews alone. I think he’ll be universally cheered, and only partly because he’s passed on, mostly, though, because he is truly terrifying as Batman’s famous nemesis.
Really, though, you can’t begin to understand The Dark Knight by looking at the Joker alone. It’s Joker, it’s Batman, it’s Bruce Wayne and it’s Harvey Dent, who’s Two-Face looks like one of those medical cross sections from encyclopedias. It’s also a pivotal performance by Tiny Lister, who plays a prisoner who makes a decision that shows the renewed strength of Gotham, even as Batman and Dent descend into their fates. The sum of these characters has allowed The Dark Knight to transcend from comic-book movie to dramatic art. Important, character-rich art born from the pulp of DC Comics.
This is a powerful film, one of the best this year. Nolan (The Prestige, Memento) has taken what he did in Batman Begins and filleted it wide open to reveal the darker abysses of Batman’s soul. It’s a natural progression, and it only makes me want to cheer louder for the third and final picture.
Remember those old Nintendo cartridges that would stop working after about a month's worth of binge playing? First you’d blow like the Big Bad Wolf on the exposed chip, then slam it up and down in the console, then maddeningly mash on the reset button … all to get Super Mario booted. When it got that bad, the games never played right again.
The Incredible Hulk is attempting a similar reboot. A new director was called in to blow on the chip, a fresh Hulk was hired to shake the machine around, and that reset button has been hit and hit and hit again. And, for the most part, this Hulk may have been successfully rebooted. But what’s it been rebooted to?
Not Ang Lee’s stylish, if also misguided, Hulk from 2003. No, that’s why the reboot was requested — in fact, demanded — by fans who went ballistic when Lee tried to make Hulk poetic, a haiku of heaviness, instead of a mean, green punching machine.
The big guy’s been reset into a frustratingly average movie, void of any personality and style. Its star may be impervious to pretty much everything, but the film takes no risks with him or its bland narrative. No doubt, The Incredible Hulk should have been the first film made, but in contrast with Hulk, it’s boring. Lee’s version was a dud, but he was onto something with the comic-style framing, the introspective themes and that unique narrative structure. The best version of the Hulk character, undoubtedly, is in an unexplored peak between the two films.
Until we get that one, though, we have The Incredible Hulk, a fresh look at Bruce Banner and his green alter ego. Banner, now played (and partly written) by Edward Norton, is a scientist on the run in Brazil. We’re given his backstory in the opening credits: Banner tests gamma radiation on himself in a military experiment; it produces his original Hulk reaction, tearing clothes and all. The experiment doesn’t go well, which is why he’s on the run from the crackpot general who thinks he owns the patent on giant, pothole-stomping men with anger management issues.
Norton, a talented actor capable of an explosive mixture of emotions, plays the role too safe, and way too rigid. His Banner is on cruise control, very much like the rest of the movie. Overacting would have served him well, but instead he’s in a coma. He’s granted one brief reprieve: Buying clothes in Mexico, he asks for a certain kind of pants … “Mas stretchy,” he says.
Norton’s no Robert Downey Jr., who gave the finger to all other comic book heroes earlier this summer as Tony Stark in Iron Man. At the end of Hulk, Downey, as Stark, makes a cameo (in the greater comic mythology, Iron Man and Hulk are in the Avengers together) and we see in startling clarity how dull Banner, or maybe just Norton, can be when compared to more interesting characters such as Stark. Maybe the cameo worked too well, though: I wished I would had seen Iron Man again and avoided Incredible Hulk altogether.
Banner may be a wimp, but his Hulk 2.0 is definitely the real deal. He’s meaner and tougher, and director Louis Leterrier (The Transporter 2) gives him more to do than anguishing over his dilemma in front of a cracked mirror. This Hulk actually stops running occasionally to show off and fight — be it with gunships, sonic pulse rays or the villain Abomination (Tim Roth), a reptilian monster created using one of Hulkie’s blood samples. The movie is a straight-up action movie, which is what these comic flicks are supposed to be. It won't be disappoint people who are looking for mass destruction. Let the smoke clear and the debris settle and the experience is hollow, void of any real enthusiasm or excitement for the genre.
Not all of it is mindless punching: Hulk’s “green time” gets inventive, like when he mashes a cop car into metal boxing gloves or when he uses a clap loud enough to wake the dead (and kill the living) to put out a fire. And for the first time in the series, we start to see Hulk as a superhero capable of heroic public service and not just a botched lab experiment on the loose.
A romance with Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) figures in as well, but it doesn’t go anywhere because, let’s face it, lovemaking with the Hulk could end disastrously; the movie stops short of having Hulk endorse Magnum condoms. Tyler — who’s not half as interesting as Betty Ross’ previous actress, Jennifer Connelly — gives gooey glances at Norton, but their chemistry is weak at best. Betty has a rather strained relationship with her father, Gen. Ross (William Hurt), the military man who methodically hunts Banner across the planet. He spends much of the movie in military installations explaining things, which is déjà vu if you’ve seen even one other comic book movie.
The action is intense, the Hulk looks more convincing, and the greater mythology of Hulk and his relationship with other Marvel Comics characters is an interesting addition, but The Incredible Hulk seems content with being tasteless — it’s just another comic book movie with another super character doing another round of super things.
By trying to tone down the risky Hulk, this Incredible Hulk went too far in the other direction, into complete boredom.
***This review originally ran in the West Valley View June 13, 2008.***
Francis Lawrence’s version of I Am Legend is the third film to be based on Richard Matheson’s popular sci-fi/horror novel about vampires terrorizing mankind’s lone survivor. Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth were the previous versions. You’d think the film actually named after the source material would have an advantage here, but no, think again.
I begin my review with Francis Lawrence’s name only so I can now refer to his credentials: the film Constantine and music videos by Britney Spears, Janet Jackson and Jennifer Lopez, three performers who have heard of “thingies with paper guts and black scribbles” but did not know they were in fact called books. So it should be no surprise that Lawrence, with screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman, royally botch Matheson’s novel.
Before I get ahead of myself, I have to admit I’m breaking my own rules, one of them being, “Review the movie, not the book it was based on.” I’ve mentioned this rule beneath screams from readers who call to tell me that Clive Cussler and J.K. Rowling write books that are better than their film counterparts. Agreed. The book shouldn’t have to answer to the film. The film is its own entity. But in this case, the movie stops its upward accent into greatness at almost the exact moment it begins to drift from its source. Curious …
Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, apparently the last man on earth, and definitely the last man in New York City, where he drives through a weed-covered Times Square, grows corn in Central Park and hunts elk in Washington Square. And then his watch beeps and he smugly drives home to batten down the hatches and sleep in his bathtub. Smith wasn’t always the last man on earth — something we learn through periodic flashbacks with cliffhangers — but then a scientist cures cancer. Like those TV pharmaceutical ads, there are side effects to this cancer treatment: “May cause vampire or zombie effect; contact your doctor if symptoms continue longer than 4 hours.” Turns out the cure is really just a new cancer, this time with pointy fangs. And then the world falls apart.
We pick up with our hero about three years after the virus pops up and begins opening up seats for Broadway shows. Neville, somehow immune to the mutating airborne virus, wanders the streets in the day and takes shelter at night when the undead, sensitive to light and all, come out to terrorize the night. Smith, smooth as ever, plays the part as a lonely, sad man with nothing to lose except quick lines at the DVD rental counter, where he’s like a 1,000 days overdue on a copy of Shrek. Schwarzenegger was supposed to play this role years ago and it’s good he didn’t; Smith is more likeable, kind of an everyman type guy.
The first half of the movie is remarkable in the way it shows us striking imagery (an empty NYC) with Neville’s insanity-inducing isolation, which he combats by talking to his dog (the film’s co-star) and mannequins he’s named and posed in still life around the city. And notice his apartment: that’s Van Gogh’s real Starry Night hanging above the fireplace — of course he’d raid the museum to decorate his pad.
Neville also has several run-ins with the undead creatures. They mind their business in their dark hideaways as long as he minds his business in the daylight. At night the same dynamic is applied, albeit in reverse with Neville hiding out while they rule the streets. Occasionally their paths cross, though, and Neville is usually packing heat. I was a little disappointed that all the creatures were digital effects, and so agile, but they served their purpose, which was to jump out of the dark with gnashing teeth.
Where I Am Legend has an identity crisis is with the introduction of two human characters who turn up out of nowhere … and in the dark no less. Also, how did they get to Manhattan with all the bridges blown up and tunnels flooded? The movie never answers, but my guess is magic carpets.
Now, for me to go any further into detail about how and why these characters derail Legend would require me to ruin the movie and the book’s ending, and at the same time too. I don’t want to do that, even though it would feel really gratifying. Just know that the book and film endings are different, and not in good ways. (In fact, this ending is so different it completely invalidates the rather awesome title of the film.) The best thing I can compare the film/book ending to is Blade Runner. The book has the Blade Runner director’s cut ending, and the movie has the theatrical release ending. Get it now? Google it if you don’t.
The film’s finale also comes too abrupt. We’re neck-deep in Legend, kind of enjoying ourselves, and then someone pulls the plug on a very big drain and in 15 nanoseconds we’re standing there dripping thinking, “Where’d the movie go?” Not where the book went, that’s for sure.
The book’s ending -- SPOILERS ahead!
In case you don’t want to read Matheson’s book from 50+ years ago, here’s a gigantic super-spoiler. Highlight over everything south of here for the text.
In the book, Neville is not a scientist, but he does pick up some science skills from books, enough knowledge to learn that there is a very specific biological reason why the undead haunt the night like vampires. Just as he makes progress hovering over his micrscope, a woman turns up near his home in the daylight.
He trusts her at first, but then begins asking for a blood sample to see if she has the virus in her veins. Eventually she whacks him on the head and takes off in the night leaving a note that says yes, indeed, she had the virus. She also reveals that there are two breeds of vampires: those that are completely dead, and those that have the virus and its side effects but are surviving in the dark. She tells Neville that he had previously killed her family as he ventured into buildings ridding his world of the virus. Because he lost his family, they share an unspoken bond, which is probably why she's not clawing out his eyes.
Lastly she warns him to leave because they are forming a new civilization in the night and they’ll eventually come for him. Neville, accustomed to his home and routines, chooses not to leave. Sure enough, months (or maybe years) later they come and take him in the night. They tell him that he is the scourge of their lives, the myth that stalks and kills them in their sleep. And because he’s the last one left, and such a ruthless killer, he has become the legend of their new culture, as legendary as Dracula was in ours.
The final passage reintroduces the girl, who offers Neville pills that will either kill him or render him numb to the execution he surely faces. In the last graphs he swallows the pills and embraces his end as a legend. Terrific stuff.
Do horror movies work when the monsters are no longer horrifying? I would argue for the negative, although Jason Voorhees’ fans, who cheered his very appearance in the rebooted Friday the 13th, would argue in the other direction. In their twisted worlds the machete-wielding murderer would have been knighted by now — Sir Jason, Lord of the Welsh Farthing, cousin of the Duke of Westerly. Sainthood would not be far behind. 
In any case, Jason is no longer a villain to his core audience; he’s decidedly blue-collar. Horrors don’t work when audiences cheer for the bad guy, especially since great pains are undertaken to introduce good guys, in this case (and in all cases for Friday the 13th movies) hormonal teens screwing around near Camp Crystal Lake, the site of some grisly murders decades back. So they have two-track minds (drugs and intercourse), but the movie requires us to care for their well-being, otherwise the scares don’t work because the victims might as well be ottomans in an Ikea display, just meaningless things. 
In the original Friday the 13th from 1980 — way before Jason went to Manhattan, Hell and space (in that order) — Jason’s mother was the bloodthirsty killer; she sought revenge against the camp counselors that let her little boy die in the lake while they were playing naked Twister in the bushes somewhere between the archery range and the whittling den. Jason and his hockey mask didn’t actually appear until Friday the 13th Part II. With the remake, the original movie’s entire plot has been relegated to the opening credits, ending with Mrs. Voorhees’ head being separated from her neck in a method not recommended by most doctors. And that’s where this one picks up, basically at Part II. 
It’s been untold decades since the Camp Crystal Lake murders, and the camp, totem poles and all, is overgrown and rotting by the festering marsh they call a lake. College kids searching for a hidden field of marijuana stumble into the camp and find Jason, who hacks up all of them save for one that he wraps in her sleeping bag and barbecues alive. Six weeks later another group of college kids venture into town to party at a rich father’s cabin. They also trespass on Jason’s right-of-way and meet grisly ends. The movie is a series of encounters with Jason, who has to one-up only himself on torture and killing devices — from screwdrivers and elk antlers to the machete that severed his own mother’s head, an implement that proves 98 percent of Freud’s theories true. 
This time around, though, the hulking and massive Jason, who was a supernatural force in the original series, is rebooted as a severely disabled (and semi-mortal) orphan, who probably doesn’t understand the concept of his mother’s death. With Jason’s newfound transience from the original series, one gets the impression that with some therapy and some wabbits he might make a convincing Lennie for a production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I liked mortal Jason, and I liked that his behavior could be counted on. He's written with a Norman Bates-like crush on his mother, which would be even more twisted and deranged had he actually vocalized his feelings, but instead he skulks around silently with apparently no will, or mouth, from which to speak. I can see why fans appreciate the Jason character — he's dependable — although I will never understand how he has risen to cult hero status.
The college kids, with their floppy hair, Greek letters and sandals — just asking for some chest ventilating if you ask me — do everything that they’re supposed to do in movies like this: the men use drugs, the women show their breasts, they all wander out in the dark for no reason, they investigate strange noises, they never run faster than Jason can walk … it’s all a very defined routine, like they’re caught in the groove of a record and can’t get out. And the record came out in 1980. 
One character, the Funny Asian Guy, doesn’t even have the ironic foresight to laugh when he says, “I’m going to the toolshed and I’ll be right back” … with a hedge trimmer rammed through my ribcage. Then there’s topless water-skier, the Hot Blonde, who is too dense to realize her nakedness just guaranteed her skull-splitting demise. Or the woodchipper operator, who forgot to install the “This Woodchipper Must Be Used As a Weapon In the Climax or Not At All” plaque to his machine's operating panel. Or the Witty Black Guy who acknowledges he's the only black character by making obtuse references to his blackness. Finally there's Girl's Boyfriend, who's like 28 years old but has apparently never had sex before, which is why he tries way too hard to get in the sack with his virginal co-star. That last douchebag has the movie's best line: staring up at a naked girl's chest he says, "Your tits are stupendous." The movie's writers must not have wives or girlfriends, because if they did they'd know better than to call breasts "stupendous" in fear of never seeing another pair again. I'm way off topic, but all these characters and their horrible dialogie are horror-movie clichés and the movie doesn’t even avoid them, or at least poke fun at their expense. It presents them as legitimate developments in a plot it's calling fresh and orginal.
Full-blown aggravation, though, set in when I realized that this could have been a reinvention, not just a remake. Yes, the film needs to acknowledge its roots by setting up dopey twentysomethings like lambs to the slaughter, but here those roots are deified for the faithful fans who expect nothing less. Yes, a remake is a very literal word: the film was made over again, as in re-done, re-filmed, re-examined. But usually such things are done to involve us in more story, better special effects or just something that the original didn’t have. This Friday the 13th lacks nothing that wasn’t in the first franchise. Yes, the mood is scarier, the violence a bit more visceral, and modern cinematography has nailed nighttime photography, but otherwise there’s nothing new that warrants more Jason. It’s frustrating that with so many horror writers working in Hollywood, none could come up with an original premise for the veteran slasher — at this stage even Jason should be bored. 
The movie is rebooted by Marcus Nispel, the same guy who rebooted the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. Nispel has done something appalling: he’s remade the two franchises the same way, nearly overlapping them in fact. In both, the villains are large, beastly men who are mentally challenged as well as mentally deranged. Both have signature weapons: Jason uses a machete so large it probably serves no purpose, and Leatherface uses a chainsaw in a part of the Lone Star State where there are no trees. Both films feature run-down houses with macabre shrines made of questionable bone and skin fragments. And both films are nihilist by design, with characters and villains who represent nothing but their own ends. Even the horror feels like black voids of emptiness.
Jason kills out of necessity perhaps, and Leatherface out of dietary requirements, but I can't say they kill for thrills — they're too emotionless and disabled to experience any emotion that might be mistaken for happiness or joy, or even just some kind of bizarre violent perversion. Truth be told, they kill to fulfill the fans' urge for blood, which is why I will never trust the opinions of gore-hounds — their appetites require only blood and every plot they endorse is just a vehicle for more carnage.
