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5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

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Directed by Marcus Nispel. Starring k Mears, Jared Padalecki, Amanda Righetti, Danielle Panabaker, Jonathan Sadowski, Travis Van Winkle and Aaron Yoo. Horror, USA, 97 min. Web Site

Fun suspense, intense violence, unique kills and great scares epitomised the FRIDAY THE 13th series, the second most successful in cinema history after James Bond.

Oh well, one out of four isn’t bad I suppose from the remake conveyor belt these days. As a massive Jason Voorhees groupie, I was severely disappointed by the twelfth movie to feature the iconic unstoppable psycho. Essentially a re-launching of the classic machete-wielding madman franchise, unlike the shrewd refreshment director Marcus Nispel gave THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE revamp stale slasher basics are left to suffice in his latest mindless maniac makeover. A bullet point compression of the first two movies – including a Betsy Palmer lookalike Mrs Voorhees explaining how she was the perpetrator of the initial murder mayhem - establishes the Jason origin DNA before the title appears in blood red 25 minutes into the action. After that genuine shock, the plot proper starts; Clay Miller (SUPERNATURAL’s Jared Padalecki) is searching local communities and woods around abandoned Camp Crystal Lake for his missing sister Whitney (ROLE MODEL’s Amanda Righetti). After one redneck sinisterly intones “Somebody go missin’ around here, they gone for good”, he bumps into another group of randy students out for a sex, drugs and rock ’n ’roll wild weekend. One of the more sympathetic thrill seekers is Jenna (MR BROOKS’ Danielle Panabaker) who bumps into Jason (THE HILLS HAVE EYES II’s Derek Mears) while exploring a creepy old shack with Clay. But will the rest of her binge-drinking bunch believe they are about to become Jason fodder – especially jerk boyfriend Trent (TRANSFORMERS’ Travis Van Winkle), the one you can’t wait to see die horribly. Eschewing the supernatural elements bequeathed him in the later charnel-house chapters Jason is made more of a Rambo figure here. Fiercely guarding his marked territory from his base of beheading operations in a subterranean mine complex situated underneath his makeshift home. Verbal crudity and topless nudity keep the old school Sean Cunningham sexist flavour marching alongside Nispel’s neat production upgrade courtesy of Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes outfit. The kills are variations on all the series favourites - sleeping bags, eye mutilation, neck slicing, you name it, its here re-jigged in some jump-cut form. And the original FRIDAY watery shock ending is reconfigured to still startle. But some of the narrative by scriptwriters Mark Swift and Damian Shannon (of FREDDY VS JASON infamy) is very sloppy. If the police really had fine-combed the entire area looking for Whitney, how come they didn’t find the vast fields of marihuana that lured the second wave of college kids to their doom?

Derek Mears is no Kane Hodder but cuts an imposing figure appearing from shadows and cutting a fast swathe through his cowering victims. While ardent Jason-ites will love the hockey mask genesis, the one nostalgically warming moment in the entire film, intense splatter is all that really matters in this mechanical renovation. That’s fine up to a point but most Voorheesians will be upset this hackneyed kick-start just isn’t as good as it should have been.

Alan Jones

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