Directed by: Marcus Nispel
Starring: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Derek Mears
Released: February 13, 2009

I may not be as huge a Friday the 13th fan as some people I know (yeah I’m looking at you Gerry), but I sure as hell know a good teen slasher film when I see it. With the number of horror remakes hitting the big screen these last few years that have come as a disappointment to the majority of fans of the originals, I’m glad to say that this reimagined adaptation of the classic “Friday the 13th” series is just about everything you’d want in a return weekend excursion to the iconic Crystal Lake.

As a brief overview, the story closely resembles Friday the 13th Part III, though luckily the audience is spared the 3D nonsense that was so big back in the early 80′s (and I’m pained to see is making a comeback some 25 years later). We follow a group of good looking 20-somethings as they make the trek out to a lakeside Summer house for a weekend  of drugs, drinking, sex, overall debauchery. Unfortunately for them, not far away and slightly off the beaten path, Camp Crystal Lake still stands with it’s lone inhabitant, a Mr. Jason Voorhees. And we all know how much he can’t stand to see young people having fun.

As most horror fans should know, the original “Friday the 13th” didn’t even feature our favorite hockey masked antagonist. While I was very curious as to how the writers planned to explain Jason’s grisly past and the creepy relationship with his fellow machete-wielding mother, I was pleasantly surprised at how they managed to condense just about everything you needed to know in the credit sequence and subsequent “prologue” killing spree.

We’re treated to a fair amount of bloodletting, scares, laughs, and as any good F13 flick would be lacking without, quite a bit of gratuitous nudity. The dialog between the characters feels natural for the most part, which pleased me greatly… if anything makes me quickly lose interest in a movie it’s cheesy dialog. You almost come to like the characters, at least until our masked friend shows up, at which point all you want to see is how they will die in the most fucked up way possible. Fire poker through the eye? Machete through the skull? Deer antlers to the back? Yeah, we know that wood chipper isn’t just for wood. Jason, Jason, Jason… you’re an imaginative one, you. And we thank you for it.

Though this movie is helmed by Marcus Nispel, the same man responsible for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, I would definitely recommend this movie. While I found the TCM remake, and similarly the Hills Have Eyes remake, incredibly depressing and hollow, this movie feels immensly satisfying as an addition to the “Friday the 13th” franchise. With nearly the perfect mixture of humor, horror, and homage, Nispel was able to remind us all what the slasher films of old are supposed to be like… guilty, gory fun.