Friday the 13th (2009).

Review #2108: Friday the 13th (2009).

Cast: 

Jared Padalecki (Clay Miller), Danielle Panabaker (Jenna), Amanda Righetti (Whitney Miller), Travis Van Winkle (Trent), Aaron Yoo (Chewie), Derek Mears (Jason Voorhees), Jonathan Sadowski (Wade), Julianna Guill (Bree), Ben Feldman (Richie), Arlen Escarpeta (Lawrence), Ryan Hansen (Nolan), and Willa Ford (Chelsea) Directed by Marcus Nispel.

Review: 

Admittedly, the Friday the 13th series is a mess worth looking into further when it comes to reliable cheap horror. Okay, maybe calling it "reliable cheap" is a swipe, but I've only managed to see exactly the first two films in the span of over ten years (where I apparently thought the first was better than Part 2) to go with the crossover Freddy vs. Jason (2003), and, well, they weren't exactly the most impressive. But people obviously care about this series since Sean S. Cunnigham first directed the original in 1980 (with the screenplay by Victor Miller), so why not consider the only other tradition hacked away from other horror movies: the remake? The three key producers behind the remake were Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller for Platinum Dunes. The company had been behind the production of several horror films (with most of them being remakes), which started with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) that extended all the way down to doing remakes of The Amityville Horror in 2005 and The Hitcher in 2007 (a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street came in 2010, as you already might have guessed). Marcus Nispel, the director of the aforementioned Chainsaw remake, directed this one. Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, and Mark Wheaton wrote the story while Shannon and Swfit (behind the previous effort in Freddy vs. Jason) were credited for the screenplay. Paramount and New Line Cinema, who each owned parts of the franchise (due to the former having sold parts to the latter in 1989), served as part of this production. The movie was a hit with audiences, but somehow it did not lead to further installments, since Paramount and New Line (who was absorbed by Warner Bros. in 2008) apparently wanted to wait until the economy was better (while not wanting one to produce it without them) before more plans ended up being scuttled. A lawsuit by Miller for the rights to what he felt was owed as the writer of the original film did not help. A prequel television series is the latest thing "in development". 

Honestly, I didn't hate the film, because my expectations were low to begin with a film that technically isn't a remake if you consider that the first film's killer was not Jason Voorhees but blah blah blah. The film takes elements from the first few films (a vengeful mother murdering the campers in revenge for her son dying there, Jason going from wearing a sack on his head to the mask, know what I mean?).  It isn't much of a bloody spectacle when it comes to "being scary" or "being interesting". The one thing they apparently have done differently with the character of Jason Vorhees is to make him seem like a survivalist that defends his territory (complete with having his own marijuana plant farm). The film runs at a predictable 97 minutes (105 for the "Killer Cut"). Holiday camps and people that might lurk in the woods when you camp is scary to those who see stuff like this, I suppose, but even Sleepaway Camp (1983) made a better effort, and they didn't have digital effects for machetes. In their attempt to bring the series back to some sort of "basics", they basically have crafted a piece of meat that is in dire need of hard liquor to be edible. Sure, it may rank as "desirable" when it comes to comparing it to, say, the one where Jason went to Manhattan, but that is not a high bar. The highlight might be Yoo in comic relief of wandering around inebriated, strangely enough. You can't even say the adults (youths, whatever) are a detriment to the film, because they don't particularly annoy me here, it just happens that they have little substance to do anything noteworthy besides a few amusing lines (imagine a character calling someone's breasts "stupendous" and you get what I mean). You know exactly what you are coming for if you dig the previous films, but I'm not really sure you get anything really that fresh for fun besides references. The stuff with Voorhees having the edge of lurking around with survival instincts is at least semi-interesting, but the film only makes light movements to actually do anything resembling a scare, complete with needing a cheap jump scare ending. As a whole, the semblance of making new ideas is there, but one is seeing most of the same middling results in the most obvious ways that you would see from a "remake". There are better picks than this middle-middle film for horror.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Into the Storm.

Review #1708: Into the Storm.

Cast: 

Richard Armitage (Gary Fuller), Sarah Wayne Callies (Allison Stone), Matt Walsh (Peter "Pete" Moore), Max Deacon (Donnie Fuller), Alycia Debnam-Carey (Kaitlyn Johnston), Nathan Kress (Trey Fuller), Arlen Escarpeta (Daryl Karley), Jeremy Sumpter (Jacob Hodges), Lee Whittaker (Lucas Guerrette), Kyle Davis (Donk), and Jon Reep (Reevis) Directed by Steven Quale.

Review: 

Seven years since its release, there is one question that persists since the release of the film: Hey, remember Twister? Now, maybe that isn't a fair question, because that film (released eighteen years prior) was a dumb movie. Granted, it was a wonderfully dumb spectacle movie, but one will generally remember what they saw out of that film with its "offbeat" characters when paired with the destruction created on screen. Honestly, with the found footage angle, it kind of reminds me of a demo reel for VFX, complete with the bare minimum of personality in the characters. Heck, going around shaking the camera a bit while a disaster happens sounds like something you could do with a bit of liquid courage. Now hey, this isn't exactly a first outing for Quale. A former second unit director, he made his first Hollywood film with Final Destination 5 (2011). 

Look, you know it isn't great, and I know it isn't great. Giving whole paragraphs about why it is such a generic movie would probably waste your time as well as the time that could be spent watching better films. So yes, one could go with the easy out that it is a bland disaster movie that rides all of its chips on the spectacle and nothing else - ah, but could you just watch the movie just for the effects and ignore the rest for 89 minutes? Eh...not really. It tries to balance its two subplots with the bare minimum, and the only thing it succeeds on is with two supporting characters that are played for comic relief. The storm chasing angle isn't even familiar enough to make me go out and compare to Twister, because you won't remember much about it to argue the point, and the family angle is here and there.in all of the slim trimmings; the narrative just can't handle the first-person perspective of the camera, because that stuff only really worked with disaster fare like Cloverfield. This is basically a lesser version of The Blair Witch Project (1999), filled with character you can't care about enough to do anything other than a mild turn on one's face for an expression (i.e., a "hmm" look).  So yeah, the characters are blah and it would be hard for a great actor to make great meat out of it. At least they try, more so for Armitage and Walsh, really. Everyone can basically be summed with a phrase anyway, such as "the one obsessed with work", or "the horny kid", or "the family person needing to go home", "the scrub", and so on. Davis and Reep play the "daredevil" comic relief, and really that seems more interesting to see when it comes to them making dumb videos about it than anything else, if only because it reminds me of when I thought about doing dumb videos for the Internet. Predictability is almost like a protein for this film, one that basically projects what is going to happen before it happens, and it isn't worth the frustrations or too many sentences. The effects are good, but that should always be the case when it comes to the art of creating tornadoes on computers without spending as much as the aforementioned twister film. I guess it depends how much one wants to spend time seeing movie houses and schools get rocked by the wind as opposed to hearing about it on television or from folks in the areas for it (of course, a fire whirl is certainly something I wouldn't want to see...ever). As a whole, if you need an effects show to gaze a bit or something to go to sleep and you don't have Twister, maybe, maybe, maybe this could work; I can't give it a recommendation at all, but I can't despise it very much either.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.