Killing Scantily-Clad Teenagers in a Hockey Mask, Part XII: A Michael Bay Production

You’re in a dark, quiet place. You are doing something very private, perhaps you’re talking to yourself, or casually unclothed. Suddenly, there is a noise, quiet but unmistakable. Something is there with you, very close, but you can’t see it. You look around frantically, then rush to leave… AND IT’S STANDING RIGHT THERE!

OMG!!!!

Scary, right? Yeah, I know; anyone who’s seen a slasher movie knows how it works. But you can’t help identifying with that feeling of helplessness. If it’s done right, you sense the dark unspeakable power that draws us to these movies, making us flinch and squirm. The new reboot of the “Friday the 13th”franchise—produced by Michael Bay ’86 and directed by Marcus Nispel of the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake—has a lot of these scenes. It’s not a running joke, or a tension-building device; it’s just the movie’s way of doing things. It’s an intriguing strategy, but it’s not quite enough.

We all know how invincible Jason is, even if we’ve never seen any of the “Friday the 13th”sequels in which he is the villain (which I have not). He lurks everywhere with his hockey mask, ready to seize, slice or spear you. He is impervious to the things that kill most human beings (e.g. drowning, Freddy Krueger). He has mommy issues, of course, but any psychological baggage is clearly secondary to his drive to kill lots and lots of juicy teenagers when they least expect it. This installment is almost shockingly straightforward about this; the mythology is de-emphasized to the point that the killings become utterly mechanical, almost believable in their stripped-down grittiness. Almost shockingly, and almost believable.

Unfortunately, it’s unwilling to go far enough, to really forsake its accumulated mythological heritage. The reluctance is understandable; the original “Friday the 13th,” for all its cheesy acting and borrowings from better horror movies, leaves a troubling mark on you, and it deserves to be reviewed and re-imagined. However, I think it’s telling that some critics who deny the original movie’s pull are throwing faint praise to this one.

Roger Ebert, who has never given a “Friday the 13th” movie more than half a star out of four, gave this one two stars and called it “about the best ‘Friday the 13th’movie you could hope for […] Its technical credits are excellent.” Nathan Lee of the New York Times calls the original “a lousy movie,” but he says the teenager-killings in this version have “vicious aplomb” and “a gleeful sense of fun.” He admits that “killing = fun” is a strange equation. “But there’s an itch for this kind of material, and here it is scratched.”
The movie’s opening segment fits Lee’s description quite well. The movie wastes little time introducing a band of slovenly teens (searching in the woods for a marijuana field), and picking them off one by one. It’s your average slasher movie condensed into ten minutes, and the sequence builds to a well-filmed, grim frenzy as the self-absorbed teens gradually figure out what’s going on, only to be slaughtered anyway.

The movie’s best, most eye-opening moment comes just after the kill-frenzy. The movie cuts to another group of kids at a gas station, making a stop on a road trip. They’re just like the first group of kids, except a little goofier and more likable. These teens are not deeply sympathetic characters, or even especially nice compared to the first bunch, but they don’t seem doomed in the same way. They have an innocence that makes us feel queasy.

When one of the kids tries to carry a jug of gasoline but is too weak, it’s kind of funny, but it also highlights his vulnerability, especially in the wake of the opening sequence’s vicious survive-a-killing-spree boot-camp-style elimination process. Slasher films are not only about satisfying some vicarious bloodlust; they probe our vulnerabilities and force us to defend them. Vulnerability isn’t just something imposed by masked killers. In slasher films, sex and self-indulgence expose moral vulnerabilities. They invade our being, just as Jason sneaks into your closet, and make us reckless and stupid. The most memorable Jason attacks in this film are preceded by such sin-invasions; the victims become almost as creepy in their self-obsessed pleasure seeking as Jason is in his lust for blood.

The problem is that the movie doesn’t make Jason’s lust for blood very interesting. The teenagers on the road trip quickly lose the innocence of the first scene, and then we’re just waiting for Jason to kill, kill and kill some more. Some of the killings are interesting, some are dull; all fall into place fairly predictably. Jason’s mommy issues surface in the dullest, most obvious ways. We get glimpses of Jason’s fetishized underground lair, which should be tantalizing but is instead merely well decorated. Jason the Force of Random Violence, as this movie depicts him, doesn’t merit psychological exploration.

So this movie doesn’t really work as a story or even as a series of standalone horror setpieces. Its images are well composed and suggestive enough, but rarely striking or unusual. It didn’t scare me very much, and it will not haunt my dreams. However, it has stuck in my mind more than I expected it to. It has a clear-eyed bitterness and a sardonic despair. Jason is a Force of Random Violence, and he will always be lurking. If you know the Friday the 13th mythology at all, you will probably see Jason’s final triumph coming, but in this context, it seems more crushing and hopeless than ever.