Anybody who has seen the first Scream film will be well aware that Jason Voorhees is not the killer in the original Friday the 13th. True card-carrying horror geeks will also know that it is not until part 3 that Jason gets his trademark hockey mask. With a machete-carrying hockey-masked Mr Voorhees standing defiantly on the poster art for this new version it is clear that this film is not exactly a remake. It is more of a franchise re-boot, a subtle difference but one which we will be seeing a great deal more of in future no doubt as it actually works quite well.

While the original Friday film is an undeniable classic and its influence on the genre has been enormous, it is not by any means a perfect film. It was a phenomenon for its time and set many wheels in motion but viewed today it cannot hope to stand up to today’s demanding standards. This new version attempts to cut away the chaff and bring us a film that is essentially a distillation of the first three films in the franchise. This means that we get to see a little of Mrs Voorhees and her fate, a pre-hockey mask Jason wearing a sack over his head as well as the familiar figure that slashed his way through another nine or so sequels.

This Jason (played by Derek Mears) may have the same look as the burly raggedy psycho we have become so fond of but he is actually a very different beast altogether. Traditionally, Jason was a slow silent stalker who indiscriminately kills whatever is in front of him without thought or emotion. This guy, though still silent, is a great deal more well, emotional. He retains his sinister stalking stride but now he breaks into a run when he needs to and hauls himself up and out of tunnels. He is a great deal more athletic in general and while this does diminish his mystique to some degree it does also make him that much more deadly.

He is also shown to be much more of a thinking man (well, in relative terms – he is a semi-zombified mutated serial killer after all) and has built a network of tunnels in his hideout in Crystal Lake. He also does the unthinkable in this version and takes a captive, showing a degree of reasoning the practically brain-dead figure of old would have been entirely incapable of. Whether these changes work or not depend on how attached you were to the older films which themselves were not exactly at great pains to preserve continuity or consistency.

Unfortunately while the screenwriters, Shannon and Swift, imbue their iconic villain with new attributes, the rest of the script is distinctly formulaic. There is one hugely audacious reversal of expectations wherein the entire first act turns out to be little more than a prologue for the main story which playfully subverts the genre. This backfires however when what happens after that is pretty much a re-tread of what was just seen but dragged out to twice as long. It would have been wonderful for the film to have taken a completely different juncture at that point and given us something other than the standard dumb teens in peril plot which is served up but alas, it never happens. As the plot trundles along and the expected people are killed in their respective ways it all begins to feel rather tired. The effects are fine and the look of the film is perfectly fitting but it just never breaks into the sort of gallop it needs to in order to truly give any chills.

The characters are the stock annoying teens (played by people probably closer to their thirties than their teens) doing stock annoying things like topless water-skiing which just isn’t sexy or titillating in the slightest – remember Jerry Seinfeld’s theories on ‘good naked’ and ‘bad naked’? This falls into the later category unfortunately. Still there’s plenty of ‘good naked’ too to make up for it with most of the female cast displaying their surgically altered breasts. Is this sort of thing still an ironic play on politically correct expectations combined with a fun reference to ‘80s horror conventions? Or are we just back to exploitation again?

The re-boot approach definitely works much better than a straight remake would have and it is interesting to see more from a character who has steadfastly refused to change over the course of 11 films. Ultimately however it just isn’t really enough and what should be taut and scary becomes dull and leaden. It is certainly no franchise-killer but it would be great to see the fulfilment of the innovation hinted at in this instalment in the inevitable sequel.

Rating: 6/10

Review By Matt Compton