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.

Cloverfield.

Review #1038: Cloverfield.

Cast: 
Michael Stahl-David (Robert "Rob" Hawkins), T.J. Miller (Hudson "Hud" Platt), Jessica Lucas (Lily Ford), Odette Yustman (Elizabeth "Beth" McIntyre), Lizzy Caplan (Marlena Diamond), Mike Vogel (Jason Hawkins), Ben Feldman (Travis), Billy Brown (Staff Sergeant Pryce), and Chris Mulkey (Lieutenant General Graff) Directed by Matt Reeves.

Review: 
I suppose it makes sense to review this film today on January 18, since it is the 10th anniversary of the film's release in theaters, so it is a perfect time to get to it along with giving you fellow readers a new review after a week since the last one. 

When asked about the film prior to its release, J. J. Abrams (who served as producer for the film) stated that he was inspired to make an American monster after seeing Godzilla toys in stores in Japan with his son, one that would be "insane and intense", which is certainly interesting. I was eleven years old when the film came out, but I don't particularly remember the marketing for the film, although I imagine that it must've been interesting for people on the Internet to focus a bit of time on (take that statement as you may). In any case, how is the movie itself? I find the movie to be fairly decent, although I can't say I really thought it was that scary or all too special. It is an interesting idea to make a monster movie that doesn't intend to go for only big entertainment spectacle destruction and instead goes for something that plays on fears and anxiety that people would have if a situation like this actually did arise; one scene in particular stands out, involving people taking out their phones after seeing the head of the Statue of Liberty fall right near them. I wish I could say the plot or the characters are as intriguing as the concept for the film, but that it is not the case here. The performances aren't terrible, but they aren't too particularly interesting. I will state that Miller does a pretty decent job, however. I found him to be more interesting to follow than the plot around the other characters, even if most of the time he is just the guy filming the things happening. Caplan also comes off a bit interesting when she is on screen.

The film has a look intended to resemble hand-held camera filming, including jump cuts that make it feel a bit like a home movie, although I will admit that the effect can feel a bit disorientating at times. Apparently, some viewers of the film during its release experienced motion sickness due to the film's cinematography, to the point that some theaters posted warnings about the film that stated it may "experience side effects associated with motion sickness similar to riding a rollercoaster". Sometimes the shots (and the shakes) worked in my view, but other times it felt a bit tedious. I imagine seeing this in a theater would be a significantly different experience than seeing it on a normal TV set. The visual effects were incorporated after filming, so the cast had to react to an unseen creature during their scenes, which I suppose is an achievement on their part in imagination. The monster (of what we see, anyway) is not too terrible, and it generally is one that feels pretty creepy and menacing. It doesn't have much of an origin, but that doesn't really feel too surprising. The film runs at 84 minutes, which feels alright considering the plot matter and the shaky-cam stuff. Ultimately, Cloverfield has an interesting premise that it plays around with a bit to fine effect, but on the whole it is a fairly decent monster/horror flick that stands alone as a curiosity if one has the patience for it.

Oh yeah, I probably should refer 10 Cloverfield Lane (#784), released eight years after this film. That film, while not a direct sequel, was a fairly interesting thriller that certainly played itself as a thriller neatly enough. Cloverfield doesn't exactly pale too badly in comparison with 10 Cloverfield Lane, but I felt that this needed to be mentioned in any case.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.