"Friday the 13th" Review (Blu-ray)

There is no doubt that when Sean S. Cunningham decided to direct Friday the 13th that he was directing the film for a pay check. This is evident from a variety of reasons including his filmography and his own commentary for the film. Listening to the film's commentary, and even looking at his resume, reveals that Sean S. Cunningham was a man who followed the trends. Not the trends of the fashion or business world (well maybe he followed those too) but rather what was popular at the box office. Before working on Friday the 13th he had previously made films that ranged from the genres of soft-core adult films to family and sports films, that included an Asylum-like ripoff film called Here Comes the Tigers which bears a semblance to another film that features misfit loser kids being coached to form a great team. These different films didn't mean that Cunningham had no experience with the horror genre when he directed Friday the 13th (and later decided to produce a whole butt load of the sequels). He was a producer of the experimental and horror changing film Last House on the Left which is more experience in the genre than Victor Miller (who is credited with writing Friday the 13th) had.

The same commentary that has Sean S. Cunningham talking about taking the job to keep the lights on also features Victor Miller commenting on how he based how to write a horror film on the much successful Halloween. He looked at that films structure and used it for the Friday the 13th even joking that he learned from Halloween that sexually active teens and twenty-somethings always die. He however came up with the idea of using a camp as the setting and tried to find an "evil" that would set up the killings of these so-called innocent people just as he saw the film Halloween had done. That "evil" would of course be (spoilers if you don't know the basic plot of any of the films in the Friday the 13th franchise) the drowning of the child Jason Voorhees. From this Miller decided that the killer would naturally be (again spoilers for a 30+ year old film) his mother Mrs. Voorhees. This whole idea for the story with that twist could have been terrific however the writing and execution of the idea is not that great. To his credit he does find a way to keep the characters realistically out of reach from one another so that the killer can one after one kill the cast while the rest of the cast does not know until its too late. Having the character be over 50 and realistically be able to kill people is a hard thing to do (Saw actually fell for that trap). It is the other aspects of the film like the exploration of the story, getting to know the characters, or the dialogue that could have been improved with another draft or two. The sad part of this whole thing is that I feel like that whole twist is wasted now as the likelihood of it being done again without the audience figuring it out is small. A remake could possibly do justice to the story but then again the twist would be known and from what I have heard the last "remake" (or reboot) of the film actually was more of a sequel.

The interesting thing is that to my surprise while watching this film I found it shocking that not only did it become a hit but that it has inspired other filmmakers. This is a film that by its very nature is derivative in two somewhat big ways. The aforementioned Halloween connection, which mostly just helped borrow that film's structure, was one of them but the other is also the score which is obviously inspired by the main theme from Jaws. Then again the whole way the killer is used could also be seen as been taken from Jaws as both films have the killer barely seen throughout the film, saving the killer for the end, thus the using of POV shots for the stalking and death scenes. What was started with slasher films of that time resulted in much of what is expected in, not only slasher films today, but also R-rated horror films. The eye candy, the gore, and the special effects laden deaths except now they are raised to a higher echelon which decades ago would not have been permitted to get an "R" rating.

My point is that Friday the 13th, which is very much derivative of other horror movies that preceded it, is not only now seen as a classic but also features nothing all that spectacular besides a good idea for a villain and the basis of slasher films that multiple horror films have used since that decade and beyond. This of course lead to controversy in the past as these films were "coming out every week" without adding anything besides a different looking death but with the same basic killer stalking the same looking characters without any real explanation for why these characters are being killed. That later complaint could be applied to Friday the 13th in some regards as the man who is reopening the camp is also a person who obviously is doing it for the children so one would think that he cares about kids enough not to repeat the crimes that have resulted in the murders at the camp so it makes no sense for the murderer to try and stop the opening of the camp.

The film is about Camp Crystal Lake as it is being reopened, at great expense, by a new owner and who is awaiting the new counselors to the camp shortly before it is to open. These adolescents spend all of their non work time trying to have fun which obviously doesn't go over well with the killer. This leads to multiple deaths with few actual scary moments or anything original. However there are three scary moments that stay out in my mind that compensate for lackluster film. As a person who is rarely ever scared by movies I find these moments refreshing. There are three of these moments which may or may not be more of startle moments that are more creative than your present jump scares. The first involves the work of a hand, an arrow, and the makeup. There is a moment of creepiness as a character is held down with a hand that I wasn't expecting which leads to lots of blood spurting out of an arrow wound. The second comes out of the last third of the film which is the most exciting part of the film even if it features stupidity and repetition. When the final girl finds out what is happening she takes measures to make sure no one can get in. This leads to a broken window (scary moment #2) and the girl meeting the killer. After the killer gives the revelation of who she or he is and why the killings have occurred, the final girl fights off her attacker and instead of picking up the murder weapon decides to runs to a car which she can't drive off in before running to another place for shelter. There she tries to find a weapon while the killer is on her trail. Then the same thing in the previous scene occurs. She evades the killer, runs to another place which the killer follows her to and this happens until the murderer is stopped. This would be more exciting if the repetitiveness and stupidity didn't deflate most of the ending chase scene. While watching this me and my brother couldn't stop contemplating about the ridiculous stupidity of that scene.

I saw the Psych episode "Tuesday the 17th" twice before watching Friday the 13th and can't believe how some of the jokes seemed like things directly taken from the movie only to be made fun of by that episode. Case in point is the crazy old man who rides a bicycle. The character in the film even seems like a joke. Watching this movie after the Psych episode just makes me like that episode more than I already did. One of the other things in common is that the episode also has an ending similar to that of the film with an emphasis on the lake. At the end of the film there is a serene moment of cops arriving as the final girl is all alone in a boat on the lake until she is suddenly attacked (scare #3). It felt like a holy crap moment, one that I thought was going to explain how the sequels exist. I should have known better. Instead it is final scare before it is revealed to be a dream. This leads to the question of how the series some how justifies a character coming back from the dead to kill even though there is no fantasy in the first film. I am curious enough to know this answer to (sadly) watch the sequel. To make that final scare any better, while the camera was focusing on the final girl in the boat my brother jokingly said "now Jason comes out and grabs her." Anyway in spite of all of these flaws Friday the 13th did a rare feat in scarring me more than once so I am marginally signing off on the film. It probably won't change anyone's life (at least anymore) but it will at least be a mild diversion from life to a camp where one is probably going to get a little scarred. It is because of this that I am giving this film a 6 out of 10 on the IMDb scale.