Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 2/17/09 Section: Arts & Society

Media Credit: Photo Courtesy of movies.yahoo.com The horror movie legend Jason Voorhees (played by Derek Mears).

Jason Voorhees returns to the silver screen in the 2009 "reimagining" of Friday the 13th. In an attempt to revamp the series for the Generation-Y audience, the director (Marcus Nispel, who was also at the helm for the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) chooses to the gore-pornographic route. He uses such an over-abundance of sex and violence that ultimately renders the viewer numb to caring about the victims anymore. And what is worse is that the highly inventive murder scenes of the original are lost to the current trend of excessive bloodshed.

The film doesn't always miss the mark to genuinely scare the audience. This Jason Voorhees (decorated stuntman/ actor Derek Mears) is an intimidating physical force whose swift athleticism makes him one of the best onscreen serial killers. Rather than walking slowly and somehow breaking the laws of physics to catch up with sprinting screaming girl, Mears is as fast as he is strong.

His acting is as impressive.

Without a single line of dialogue he gives the character depth and dimension unforeseen in the series. That ability to convey contrasting emotions combined with his sheer prowess makes him the true star of the movie. What is sad, however, is the fact that most of the victims with their chatty dialogue never come close to showing any real emotion to match that of Mears.
The other actors (with the exception of Jared Padalecki) are mere physical presences for the killer to play chop shop. They are the typical over-sexed, drug-taking, beer-drinking shells of college students that make every cliché mistake of the horror victim.

They decide to explore the haunted campgrounds-first mistake. They say that they will be right back like one character does when going to the tool shed-second mistake. And many of them are egotistical jerks: third mistake. Haven't any of these characters watched Jamie Kennedy's "how to survive a horror movie speech" from Scream. How are you supposed to care about these people if they make every bad decision possible?

The only one of the hunted to escape these pratfalls is Jared Padalecki as the determined young man searching for his missing sister. He isn't dimwitted or looking to spend all of his time pursuing meaningless spoils. Rather, he is the one person whose words have some poignancy and whose soul isn't completely empty.

Though most of his attributes are those of the stock hero in a horror flick, there are several moments when his good-guy persona seems a bit forced as the filmmakers make every attempt to paint him as perfect,and he just seems too ideal: the brother who will never give up the search for his sister, whose mother passed from cancer, and who always does the right thing. If they would have given him one flaw, he would have been a bit more human than this unrealistic moral Templar.

The film will appeal to the average modern horror film lover. But for this critic, whose tastes tend to go for the vintage plot-heavy rather than guts-spilling horror flick; it failed to give me the goose-bumps I want to feel. But it did leave me with need to see the incredible physical acting of Derek Mears paired with better material that could make him a legend in the genre.

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