Friday the 13th

Directed by Marcus Nispel

Studio/producer: New Line Cinema, Paramount/Platinum Dunes

Rated R for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, language and drug material.
I must admit, I’m not really into horror movies.  But I am aware of the great three franchises of horror classics: Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  These series of movies prominent throughout the 80s and 90s showcase slasher movies at their best: lots of blood, lots of cheese, and really scary antagonists.

This revival of the classic Friday the 13th horror movie franchise by the director of the revival of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise is a pretty good movie as slasher films go, but not knowing about them in general I must merely say that it is a good movie.

A young man named Clay (played by Jared Padalecki, best known from the series “Supernatural” and “Gilmore Girls”) searches through several forest regions including the storied Camp Crystal Lake for his sister Whitney (played by Danielle Panabaker, known for starring in a number of diverse TV series but most notably for the courtroom drama called “Shark.”)  Whitney has disappeared along with her friends about a year and a half before the movie begins in earnest, but we see that their fates were sealed by the undead, rage-filled murderer known as Jason Voorhees.

What follows is much of the same that happened in the previous movies, buckets of blood, death and in several notable cases, shots of breasts (which belong to young women who are killed shortly after their moments of toplessness).

Not knowing what went on in the previous movies in the series, I’m somewhat clueless as to the significance of a lot of the events, but I can comment on what I’ve seen, and what I’ve seen is good.  It seems to be well-made but I could detect some fan-service in many of the scenes that I don’t get.  So if you’re a big fan of these movies, you’ll get it.

I would give this four stars out of five.  Horror is not my preferred genre, but this movie is definitely workable for me.