Friday The 13th (2009)

Friday The 13th was directed by Marcus Nispel and stars Derek Mears as Jason.

This movie is NOT a remake of the original Friday (1980). I went into the movie assuming it was just another retread in the spirit of Rob Zombie's Halloween (2008), and was quite grateful it wasn't.

(By the way, watch the first fifteen minutes of Halloween, then throw it out and watch the original. There's a bit of interesting characterization for Michael Myers in the intro, then absolutely nothing else worth watching. I can't believe H2: Halloween 2 (2009) comes out this year. Rob Zombie's only good movie was The Devil's Rejects (2005).)

Anyway, I wasn't expecting much of the new Friday as a result. However, it picks up where the first left off, working as a sequel. I was glad they didn't attempt a remake, however, this creates problems for me, as does H2. If one makes sequels of the original, don't they then overlap with the existing sequels, cancelling them out? (And how could one ever cancel out Jason X (2001) aka "Jason in Space"?)

Besides the elimination of some good entertainment, it creates a problem. I'm not saying that Jason X is art, necessarily, but one can't simply eradicate so much material without creating weak spots in the canon, for the newer movies will unavoidably be informed by the older sequels. They're building on the foundation they are denying.

It strikes me as being a bit too close to fanfiction, or just fandom wish fulfilment, that if one can just ignore the pesky sequels, one can deny the basic cheesiness of the genre. This just doesn't work. Look at Prom Night (2008). By ignoring the source material, they alienated the built-in base of series fans. Conversely, the result was still too of the genre to be enjoyed by casual viewers. They got the worst of both worlds, and created a bomb the horror world views with shame.

However, the movie itself was entertaining, if uneven. It opens with the ending of the original, then shifts into modern day. A group of teens are camping near Chrystal Lake, they are stalked and killed, ect. The thing is, the killings are going too fast. No one will be left to finish out the movie. After twenty minutes, everyone is dead. However, this is really just the first act. ANOTHER group of teens (you'd think they'd start running out) go camping, joined by the brother of one of the girls, who's been kept alive by Jason because she looks like his mother.

The first movie could have been cut out, really, because it really functions mostly as clutter. The whole first twenty minutes could have been reduced into a flashback montage. I felt like the first act was mostly time filler, when I really wished they had used that time to elaborate upon the later killings.

Accordingly, gorehounds will be vastly disappointed. This movie does not try to top itself in any manner. I really think that, in this respect, it was written by someone who knew the conventions of the genre, but didn't really understand the purpose. Yes, people are supposed to be picked off one by one, but the draw is how this occurs. If everyone is chased all around for a few minutes, then stabbed, there is no reason to watch. One girl is burned alive, but when the camera focuses in on her face, she just has a few scrapes on her cheeks. It just doesn't make sense.

The lighting is so dark, as well, that one wouldn't be able to see any great effects anyway. I felt like they just didn't want to spend the money, so they just threw some Caro syrup on everybody, turned down the lights and asked them to scream. Darkness alone does not make something scary. Just look at The Burning (1981). The raft scene was done in broad daylight, yet it's really gorey and well done, especially for the Eighties.

Movie Itself: C+

Overall: D+

My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

My Bloody Valentine 3D was directed by Patrick Lussier and stars Jensen Akers and Jamie King.

Augh! This movie was great!

Seriously. It delt out exactly what it promised: An 80's-style slasher romp that was fun to watch. It wasn't deep or nuanced in any way, but it didn't pretend to be. This lack of pretension allowed the film to foreground itself as derivational and thereby revel in its lack of originality.

My only problem was that our local theatre was only showing it in 2D. (Boo! Hiss!) However, the 3D effects were pretty well done, because quite often images seemed to pop out anyway, despite our appaling lack of 3D glasses.

A+

Baby Blues (2008)

Baby Blues was released in 2008 by Lars E. Jacobson and Amardeep Kaleka and stars Colleen Porch and Ridge Canipe.

I don't know what to think of the movie, exactly. It certainly took a rare kind of guts to make a slasher movie about Postpartum Depression, but that may not have payed off.

Baby Blues is, in fact, too heavily influenced by slasher films. This film could have been much more successful had it concentrated more on the mother's descent into her insanity and how her rage begins to manifest itself, like how Bug (2006) was set up, rather than parceling out a few faux-creepy/crazy scenes in the first few minutes before immediately segueing straight into the traditional stalk-and-kill second act.

Conversely, the slasher aspect could have worked had the movie not taken itself so seriously. I mean, the concept seems, to me, to be classic exploitation movie fodder, but by trying to be so SERIOUS and GRITTY, the movie lost what could have been a great example of bad taste. I mean, it IS a film about a mother murdering each of her children while spouting catchphrases such as "Come to Mama!" That's not exactly Highbrow Art Film material.

What makes exploitation movies great is their unapologetic and somewhat gleeful use of horrible situations, converting our deepest fears into something ridiculous we can goggle at. Without that sheen of hyperbole, the movie simply becomes uncomfortable to watch, and not in a thought-provoking kind of way. This is exactly the trap Baby Blues fell in to.

Also, without a mood of exploitation, the end of this movie seems jarring against the tone of the first two-thirds. The mother's survival, and the revelation that she is, in fact, pregnant again, seem a bit too "And the seemingly dead body sits up!" for my taste. Especially since the beginning of the movie worked so hard to retain realism, it feels cheap that she could have escaped, un-scarred, from a house fire to be taken back in by her husband, who then expects this relevation to sit well with his one surviving son. It's just too contrived.

Also, I understand the concept of Southern Gothic, but can't crazy people be from somewhere else every so often?

C

Hatchet (2006)

Hatchet came out in 2006, was written and directed by Adam Green and stars Joel Moore, Tamara Feldman,and Deon Richmond, along with a supporting role from Mercedes McNab, or Harmony from Buffy!

First of all, holy cheese on a cracker. I just had to get that out there. If you want some fantastic, no-cut-aways gore, watch this movie. Seriously. There was no cutting away to the shadows on the wall, and the effects were creative and well done. I really wish I could have seen it in theaters, or in HD or something. Whoa.

Now that I'm finished gore-geeking out, on to the review. This movie is billed as a Horror Comedy, and it manages to fulfill the requirements of both genres in a way that is quite satisfying. It is what I think so many Horror Comedies fail to be, which is funny but still frightening.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) manages both, but even Shawn of the Dead, (2004) which is often cited as people's favorite Horror Comedy, fails in this respect. A zombie friend one keeps chained up to play video games with is funny, but all the bite, so to speak, of the zombie threat is neutralized. Needless to say, Hatchet does not end on such a light-hearted note.


The scene I found the most interesting on an intellectual level involves two older, Midwestern tourists who are dispatched early on. Everyone is stranded in the bayou near the house of Victor Crowley, and the only way out of the swamp is to pass this haunted, murderous house. The husband, Jim, has been injured by a crocodile, and Ben and Marcus, the College guys in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, are helping him to walk. Once they find out the house is haunted, they immediately abandon the older man. His wife, Shannon, takes him on her own shoulder, leading him towards the road and the house. As she walks with him, she says "Everything's going to be just fine... We have the Good Lord with us, baby. The Good Lord will protect us." Of course they are both immediately and gruesomely killed.

The fact that Shannon utters those lines moments before her death is quite significant. In horror, no matter the medium, the true terror lies in the fact that no one, not even God, can save you. There is no escape. Belief is, in fact, often the way deeper into trouble. Take Bug, (2006) with Ashley Judd, or Kate Hudson in Skeleton Key (2005). These examples don't necessarily deal with religion, exactly, but they show the downsides of belief in a way not usually seen in the media, that faith in the wrong thing can hurt just as much as positive faith can heal. I think this illustrates what the true purpose of Horror movies is: not only as a catharsis, a release of all the negativity inherent in the human psyche, but as a outlet for ideas that, though valid, are considered unacceptable in society.

One last thing: The tag line to this movie is ridiculous:
"It's not a remake. It's not a sequel. And it's not based on a Japanese one. HATCHET: Old School American Horror." A Japanese what? I mean, I know the meaning is inferred, but that just sounds bad syntactically. Come on, people. Also, a movie based on an earlier Japanese film would be a remake as well, so that's redundant.

Movie: A
Syntax: D-

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

I thought I'd start off with something considered a classic, but not something too well known. (Spoiler Alert, btw).

Sleepaway Camp was written and directed by Robert Hiltzik, starring Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086320/)

First of all, I like slasher movies. They just rock, despite the many problems inherent in the genre, and this one is a perfect example. The politics behind this movie made it hard for me to enjoy in retrospect, though I was riveted while it was on-screen.

I can't deny that some of the kills were effective, even if they seem a bit old-school now. I mean, getting scalded while trying to boil corn is a bit less impressive than the gore of the torture-porn genre. However, what made these kills frightening was that they left something to the imagination. There was a lot of shadow work and shots of grasping hands, with a few well-done shots of the dead body thrown in as well. Much of the kill is not actually shown on-screen.

This means that, rather than squirming away from something that is graphically depicted, the viewer's mind has to fill in the gaps, which is always so much worse, or better if one prefers. The viewer didn't have to physically see Judy, the camp mean girl, get violated with a curling iron, the shadow on the wall was enough.

Judy's death, to me, sums up her status in the movie. It is a symbol of femininity, a curling iron, that kills her. Overall, she exists only to be the Whore in contrast to Angela, the almost-mute new camper's, initial status as Virgin. When she first really attacks Angela in the cabin they share, she focuses on her body. She asks why Angela showers alone, and speculates as to if she's reached puberty yet. To Judy, this is the most insulting thing she can say to Angela. Judy's status at the camp focuses directly around her body, as do all the girls'. Angela's failure to fit into their concept of girlhood enrages them. Most of Judy's interactions with Angela consist mainly of Judy screaming into Angela's passive face, though this may just be a result of bad acting.

The "twist" ending held just as much gender bias. Angela is reveled as being male, and the killer to boot. The end scene, especially Angela's bug-eyed expression, is creepy, but the underlying morals are creepier. Angela's true crime is not conforming to society's gender roles.

Her motivation for killing is apparently not the horrible accident that killed her father and brother, which was caused by careless campers, but instead being raised as a girl by her aunt, who it seems was transgendered and preferred to have a girl child. This experience, though it would be confusing to a child in real life, is positioned as so inherently traumatic as to turn someone into a psycho killer.

It also seems that the end shot provided the genesis of all the J-Horror screaming ghost children, as Angela could easily be transported into The Grudge during this shot. If this is good or bad, that's personal preference.

Overall:
The Film Itself: B
The Film's Politics: D-