Series: Friday the 13th

Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13^th openly defies originality, borrowing liberally from John Carpenter's Halloween and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but succeeds in spite of it. Although far from being the paradigm of the genre, the film nevertheless paves a succinct pathway through its boogeyman tale, striking a few familiar notes of its predecessors while creating its own unique beats along the way. It's a slasher flick stripped down to its most primal vices-sex and violence-and Friday the 13th unflinchingly bathes the audience in copious amounts of both. (read more...)

Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th (2009), a "reboot" of the popular slasher franchise of the same name, is a frustrating cypher of a film. A critical nonentity, it is neither especially commendable nor particularly condemnable. Few elements stand out as objects of worthy discussion and even those that do provide extremely meager returns. The filmmaking is professional but uninspired, resulting in a vaguely familiar smorgasbord of pastiches and rehashes, reconfigured just enough as to not raise any ire from those keen-eyed enough to recognize the inspirations. In short, it's a truly terrible movie, for it takes no risks and asks for no involvement from its audience. (read more...)

In the wake of New Line Cinema’s announcement that it will be rebooting the Friday the 13th series, there will be some filmgoers that will be introduced into the famed franchise for the first time and will want to check out the previous eleven entries. Those newcomers will be hard pressed to find a worse film in the entire Friday the 13th collection than Friday the 13th Part VIII:  Jason Takes Manhattan. If the name of the film itself doesn’t evoke just a bit of laughter, then perhaps the poor character development, shameful plot, and careless ending will do the trick. Please keep in mind that the Friday the 13th series started with a serious horror film.(read more...)

Like it or not folks, this movie was The Phantom Menace for horror fans. Put in the works in 1994, most horror fans gave up hope that this would ever be made. Here we are, 9 years later, with one question:

Did Freddy fry marshmallows on his face or something?

Well, that was MY question. But, you might be asking, “Did it live up to his hype?” And I would answer, “The best it could.”(read more...)

Damn you, Horshack.

Just when Jason was finally lying peacefully in his grave, Tommy Jarvis and Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter" have to go and accidentally stick a lightning rod in his chest. Which isn't good because, in case you didn't know, lighting causes deceased mass murderers to come back to life.(read more...)

There have been Friday the 13th films that have been dreadful. There have been Friday the 13th films that have been unwatchable (yes, A New Beginning, I’m talking about you). But Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the first one that’s been utterly dull.

The production values are solid, the acting is uneven but negligible and the script at least tries to inject some new ideas into the series. So what’s so wrong with the movie? Simply put, it isn’t any fun.
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The first of many sub-par follow-ups to a movie that was only average to begin with, Friday the 13th Part 2 purports to take place five years after the events of the original. While this is mainly due to logic (who would start another camp right next to Crystal Lake only a year after a dozen people got slaughtered there?), it can't disguise the fact that this sequel was thrown together half-assed in order to hit theaters in summer of 1981, less than a year after the first installment was a huge surprise hit.
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Just when it seemed the Friday the 13th movies would continue on a downward trajectory until they became so bad even indiscriminate teens refused to see them, along comes the first installment since the original that isn't a complete waste of time.

Picking up where Part 3 left off (with Jason's dead body lying in a barn and another dozen teens hacked to pieces), young Corey Feldman and his family (a mother, a sister and a dog) have picked the wrong day to move to a cabin on Camp Crystal Lake.

Of course it wouldn't be much of a slasher movie if the killer spent the entire flick chasing two kids, an old lady and a dog, so for the sake of the body count the cabin next door is occupied for the weekend by the cast of Porky's.
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Worst episode EVER! - Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons

Production of the tenth (!!!) installment in the indefatigable Friday the 13th series wrapped in my hometown of Toronto late in the summer of 2000. The film was to be released a couple of months later for Halloween, then bumped to March 2001, then summer, then Halloween, then Spring 2002... Is it just me, or does this suggest to you that maybe - just maybe - the producers are in a serious panic, desperately re-shooting or re-editing in vain before admitting defeat? Even if you haven't seen the unmitigated disaster that is Jason X, the multiple postponements of its release should help you do the math.(read more...)

The things which most die-hard Friday the 13th fans dislike about Jason Goes to Hell are the things which I believe make it one of the best later entries in the series. Namely, its the movie's departure from the tried and true Crystal Lake formula that makes it interesting and actually engaging. Of course the plot, which we'll get to in a minute, is a little more involved than that of some of the previous films, but Jason Goes to Hell is full of little details that should have been part of the series for a long time and it even attempts to explain Jason's darn near immortal status.(read more...)