Should the Updated Friday the 13th (2008, Marcus Nispel) be Swerved or Should We Happily Retread Familiar Territory?

A re-imagining of a horror original, one of the earliest members of a genre which has since become known as the ’stalk & slash’ or ’slasher’ movie genre. In my opinion, Jason has always been the poor relation of the late Seventies/early Eighties wave of horror films which include the far superior Hallowe’en (dir: John Carpenter – 1978) and the excellent A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven – 1984).

The original poster for Friday the 13th (1980). Apparently, director Sean S. Cunningham’s film had no script when he took out this ad in Variety magazine. Image supplied by Wikipedia

I often felt that the ‘vacancy’ issue i.e. the absence of human emotion in a human being who callously kills other humans (as opposed to Freddy, who had returned from the dead), was much better embodied by Michael Myers’ killer in John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 spine-tingler. Having said that, the update of Friday the 13th is not that bad and is actually a lot more enjoyable than its original, possibly because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. All in all, this is unlikely to either inspire or discourage horror fans as it has sufficient bite, predictability and surprises to slot comfortably into the ‘just above average’ category.

6/10