The Last Friday

So it has indeed been a minute since I last watched the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th, never an  altogether lousy experience, but there wasn't a serious necessity to get right back to it. It does recall past films in the 80s and adds some new details series fans sure enough critiqued with scrutiny. Underground tunnels and outside lights for his "slayground" being among the new additions, not to mention, he's an expert crossbow marksman and could definitely compete in ax throwing contests. You get Pamela's character and beheading at the beginning, with child Jason lifting the machete used to kill her, adopting it has his main weapon of choice.

The end of Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) with the shrine to mommy's severed head is included, Jason located the hockey mask in a barn (?!), for a time wears a sack to conceal his face, holds a victim in a sleeping bag (recalling the sleeping bag use of Friday the 13th Part VI (1988)) over a campfire, buries the machete into a bear trap victim's head, impales victims on sharp tools, animal head trophy antlers, and tow truck spikes, holds a young woman hostage because she favors his mother, drops his machete into the head of a victim while she tries to hide under a boat ramp, and practically disembowels one victim. The Friday series was considered sacred to the writers of this remake, so the machete was especially an important murder weapon, as Jason relies on it most of the time to strike and stab. And the film, to its surprising credit, not only offers naked breasts from the likes of America Olivo, Willa Ford, and Julianna Guill, Ford goes topless skiing and Guill rides on top of Travis Van Winkle for quite a little longer than expected, truly selling their physical sexual motion until both orgasm. 

I do think Padalecki's Clay is very similar to his Supernatural persona, on the road, looking for a loved one, encountering a menace, and struggling to stay safe despite impending danger always. Panabaker was one of the cast of young adults--invited to Van Winkle's father's well furnished and expensive cabin, seemingly decorated by advertisers for Pier One--I certainty liked, probably the most adult and behaved of them. Potsmoking, beer pong, seductive dancing (Guill makes her tight, petite little body sway sensually), and the like basically stereotype disposable characters. Van Winkle certainly can't help being an entitled and privileged dick who just picks fights with Clay for some reason, perhaps included to get a rise out viewers, a rude asshole who happens to have the best sex if his life not long before Jason guts him ferociously.

That Jason kidnaps Righetti and holds her hostage in his Underground lair has always been a problem many Friday fans balk about. You see it come up a lot when fans talk about it. I get the point, but as Friday fans sometimes say...Jason doesn't take hostages.

The reason I guess I don't watch this one much is that this very much looks like Nispel's Chainsaw Massacre remake, and that charm of the Paramount 8 is for the most part avoided. And the litany of young adult bodies to lay waste is provided but most of the cast bring very little actual personality outside the usual stereotypes. In fact there are basically three starts to the film. Pamela's chasing a counselor before being beheaded, Righetti and her friends visiting Crystal Lake to locate and secure marijuana until Jason appears, and a fresh batch of characters arriving at the cabin for a weekend party. And the end would seem to indicate Jason had died, only for a woodchipper and machete stab to his torso to seem ultimately ineffective.