Movie Review: Friday the Thirteenth

I promised a proper review of Friday The Thirteenth, so here goes. This is a re-imagining rather than a remake, with bits and pieces from several of the old F13 movies all thrown into one. I'll say at the outset that I'm not a big fan of the slasher genre and that I've seen only the original Friday the Thirteenth, not parts two to gazillion.

In the cheaply-made, effects-lite original, a group of young people come to the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake with the intention of re-opening the camp. They all die, murdered by the mother of a boy who drowned in the lake because the camp counselors were making out instead of watching him. At the end of the movie, the last (female) survivor of the group kills the killer and appears to hallucinate the dead boy coming out of the lake. There is no Jason (except that blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot at the end, and no hockey mask. The female killer actually makes it quite a subversive example of the genre.

By contrast, the new version is made by Michael Bay's company, Platinum Dunes. Bay has a producer credit but it's unclear how much input he had on the actual film. Platinum Dunes is known for these remakes and some have been very popular with genre fans, so we should expect a high quality, if unimaginative, film with plenty of nudity and gore.

Did we get it?

( Film spoilers ahoy! )