I have a pretty big man boner for Alexandre Aja. I mean come on, High Tension? Awesome. The Hills Have Eyes remake? Super awesome, possibly more enjoyable than the original. Piranha 3D? Holy fuck yeah. Mirrors? Well, everybody is allowed some mistakes. But when I found out he was going to be involved in the Friday the 13th remake I was pretty stoked. And then guess what happened? HE FUCKING STOPPED BEING INVOLVED! Bullshit, right? After finding that out, my interest in the film went from willing to see it theatrically to willing to get it out of that piece of shit Redbox service. That’s right, not even willing to put it on my Netflix queue, only willing to randomly rent it when I went to get groceries. And you know what made me watch this movie again? THE FACT THAT I NOW OWN IT ON BLU-RAY! What a turn of events!

Hahaha, nice bag on your head you stupid piece of shit. Real intimidating.

The first five minutes of this film recreated the ending of the first film, with a voiceover from Jason’s mother talking about how pissed she was that her son died because of camp counselor negligence and fornication. Her head gets chopped off. We then see a figure hovering over her and then run into the woods, supposedly Jason. We then see a group of teens that are in search of drugs in the woods who have to camp out for the night. One couple goes exploring and finds a house, only to be interrupted by Jason trying to kill them. Another couple has sex in a tent after the girl whips out her jugs and smears baby oil all over them like it ain’t no thang. That girl happens to be America Olivo from Bitch Slap, by the way, who apparently my brother and I heard sing the National Anthem at a Cubs game? Oh, then another dude goes running into the woods to find weed, and he gets killed too. So all those characters we just met are all dead I guess? And Jason is wearing a bag over his head. Look at that! They’ve already summed up the first two movies in 20 minutes.

Why are you complaining? Who gives a shit? You’re all going to die.

So now we meet NEW teenagers, Travis Van Winkle plays a guy in search of his sister, who was one of the girls who supposedly got killed in the beginning, but he deserves it because he got to kiss Diora Baird in Stan Helsing. Ryan Hanson, from Party Down and Veronica Mars fame, and Willa Ford, who was one time some famous singer for some song, but she was famous in this for showing her boobs. Oh, and there’s a couple other arbitrary characters who die so who gives a shit. While Jason is trying to kill these assholes, he finds his iconic hockey mask to replace his fancy bag, so good for him. Anyways, Jason kills someone with a bow and arrow, he throws a tomahawk, he booby traps things, good old Jason antics. Eventually everybody dies except for the dude looking for his sister, and his sister, that he has found. They throw Jason into a woodchipper and then toss his body in Crystal Lake…..ONLY TO HAVE HIM JUMP OUT OF THE WATER AND GRAB THAT BITCH AT THE END LIKE HE DID IN THE FIRST MOVIE.

Maybe you should have rethought that whole “go waterskiing topless with creeps lurking in the woods” thing…

So let me just first talk about this film as I would any other slasher. It was fair. That’s about it. The plot didn’t really matter, it was just about the violence and the pleasure that you took from seeing the characters die. Between the drugs, boobs, and violence, this movie has pretty much everything you need in the equation. So how does it rank as a Friday the 13th film? Well, once again, it hit the major points of most of the films in the series, which are drugs, boobs, and violence. This was a recurring theme in most of the films and it tied into the mythology of the character. The reason Jason drowned was because the counselors were too busy doing drugs and having sex, so the first film involved Jason’s mother wreaking havoc on them, which is why we always see characters that partake in these things dying. So there you have it, even though this film was a “remake”, they might as well have just made it the umpteenth installment of the series because of how closely it adheres to the mythology.

“GIVE CASEY JONES A HUG, YOU WEIRD FACED FUCK.”

So what about all you cocksuckers complaining about the booby traps and the running and the fact that he kills people in more ways than just smashing them? Well, fuck you for thinking that. Similarly to Freddy Krueger, I feel as though Jason is a character who is larger than life who people don’t really know the “rules” of. In the first film, he wasn’t even the killer. In the second film, he didn’t wear the mask. It wasn’t until the third film that he got the mask, and the fourth film clearly shows him running after his victims. Also, the fourth film was intended to be the last, until it was successful. It seems as though from the fifth film on, he does adhere to the “rules” of Jason, but that’s only a little more than half of the franchise. Keeping in mind this is a remake, which is generally meant to reinterpret the source material, I think the filmmakers kept true with the Jason mythology. The use of beartraps, tomahawks, and archery are all tied in to the fact that he lives at/near campgrounds. These are probably all skills he picked up while he was younger or picked up from watching others. Granted, this movie didn’t really bring anything new to the equation, but I feel they successfully added another chapter into the series that surpassed a good majority of the installments, despite the fact that they broke “rules”.

Wolfman Moon Scale