Friday the 13th (2009)

The slasher genre ranks among the few useless genres, like the comedy spoofs, that usually take only months to make, have no need for a talented writer, director or actors, and end up thriving on the endless pockets of teenagers who eat up gore, breasts and paper thin story lines. In a sense slasher films have made for themselves a successful niche in the horror genre where horrible is actually what the creators shoot for.

Friday the 13th is the 12th film in a slasher series that has been ongoing since 1980 when it started its run with the young Kevin Bacon. Now its 2009 rebirth is an attempt to breathe new life into the seemingly never ending story of deformed psychopath Jason Voorhees, whose been killing campers ever since the 80's when his insane mother was beheaded by a camper in front of him. Ever since then Jason as been out for vengeance on whomever crosses his domain. This time (once again) it's a bunch of unlucky campers looking to get high, and looking to have some fun, Jason quickly disposes of them in the first 20 minutes of the film. Six weeks later the Clay Miller (Jared Padalecki) arrives at Crystal Lake looking for his sister who was apart of the group that went missing. Clay runs into another band of campers lead by one major douche and his preppy friends, who are about to experience the horror of there lives.

There's a saying "if you've seen one slasher film, you've seen them all," that could not be anymore true and to be even more specific, if you've seen one Friday the 13th film, you've seen them all. Don't expect anything new in this twelfth installment, there's still no story, no surprises and still nothing makes sense. All the killings can be seen coming a mile away and you can automatically predict who's next, making the entire film predictable and never remotely scary. You'd think after 29 years of killing campers in the forest someone would have wised up and burnt Camp Crystal Lake to the ground, but no one seems to care that dozen's of people go missing in a matter of days, in each film! But then again if you take into consideration the usual cast of characters, maybe its not such a bad thing. The characters in this installment are so utterly annoying and idiotic that you almost begin to root for Jason to take them out, only Clay, his sister and Jenna ever warrant any sympathy, while everyone else are complete losers and almost deserve their bloody fate, Jason's only helping the cleanse the gene pool.

The film's star performance is by far from Supernatural's Jared Padalecki who thrives in these types of roles, but sadly this is more of a step down for him when Supernatural's worst episode is better in every way than this film. The only real surprise for me was Willa Ford. Probably not well known to most, Willa had a sort lived music career back in 2001, I actually thought she had some talent but I guess she figured doing sub par films and showing her assets was more profitable. Sadly for her going from a one hit wonder to a slasher scream queen isn't much of a career move. Overall, slasher fans (more so the fans of this series) will likely find Friday the 13th a good return of the franchise. Personally this genre isn't my forte', I like a film that at least has a few things going for it, and makes a little sense. But even I must regrettably admit I found Friday the 13th slightly entertaining, but entertaining in the same way watching a train wreck is entertaining not because the film is actually any good.

6/10