Mania Grade: C-
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Info:
- Rating: Unrated
- Starring: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Derek Mears
- Written By: Damian Shannon and Mark Swift
- Directed By: Marcus Nispel
- Distributor: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
- Original Year of Release: 2009
- Extras: deleted scenes, featurette
- Series: Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th Killer Cut Extended Edition DVD Review
Friday the 13th Killer Cut Kills It By
Tim Janson
June 24, 2009
DEREK MEARS stars as Jason in New Line Cinema’s and Paramount Pictures’ horror film “Friday the 13th,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
© New Line Cinema
The parade of 1980s slasher film remakes continues with the rebirth of the Friday the 13th series with the DVD release of Friday the 13th: The Killer Cut. What’s new on the “Killer Cut”? Well unless you saw the theatrical version your guess is as good as mine. New Line elected NOT to include the theatrical version on the DVD although the Blu-ray version does come with both cuts of the film. The Killer Cut is eleven minutes longer than the theatrical version which means it’s at least eleven minutes too long. The remake is clumsy and heavy-handed and makes you wonder if the people involved in this film even took the time to watch the earlier films in the series.
We start in 1980 in a brief re-telling of the end of the first film as Jason’s mother is beheaded as a young Jason watches horrified from the bushes. Cut ahead to present day as a group of campers stumbles into the area around Camp Crystal Lake and is slaughtered by Jason, wearing a cloth mask…the goalie mask is yet to come. In this first 15-20 minutes, the filmmakers do a good job of bridging the first two original films in the series but things don’t go as well from that point forward.
Jared Padalecki gets his turn to star in a slasher remake after his Supernatural co-star Jensen Ackles starred in “My Bloody Valentine 3D” earlier this year. Padalecki might as well be playing Sam Winchester for as much as he stretches his role as Clay who is searching for his sister, Whitney, one of those missing campers. Another group of fresh meat has come up to rich boy Trent’s lakehouse for the weekend. Here we have political correctness played to the hilt as Trent ’s friends include a Caucasian, an Asian, and an African-American. Trouble is we can’t buy any of these guys being Trent ’s friends as they have nothing in common and Trent is a snooty jerk.
The real problem with the film is Jason himself. Derek Meers plays Jason this time around and while he’s very tall he’s not quite as bulky or intimidating as Kane Hodder. Still the main issue is how the character is written. Jason has always been a force of nature but now he’s capable of careful planning and plotting. He utilizes animal traps and tripwire alarms. He kills one person with a bow & arrow and has set up the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake with floodlights and has electricity running through his underground series of tunnels. Just where in the hell is he getting power from and who is paying the bill? We never see or hear a generator running, although apparently Jason is sneaking into a nearby barn and stealing kerosene, itself a ridiculous proposition. And since when did Jason start taking hostages?
Ok, so the film certainly looks better and cleaner from a technical standpoint than the originals…having a budget of $19 million ensures that. But there’s no sense of the fun of the original films. One of Jason’s most memorable kills in the original series was picking up someone in a sleeping bag and slamming them against a tree. Here he finds a girl in a sleeping bag and takes the time to tie her to a tree limb so he can roast her over an open fire. Even for Jason that is overkill.
Extras
As disappointing as the film was, the lack of DVD extras makes this even more of a let down. There are about eight minutes of deleted scenes. The only one of interest involves Jason finding the goalie mask a bit differently. Actually I thought this deleted scene was better than the one they used in the finished cut.
“Rebirth of Jason Voorhees” is a twelve minute featurette that includes interviews with cast members, writers and the Director about bringing Jason back to life. It’s rather amusing to watch them all pat themselves on the back as if they’ve just re-invented the wheel.
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LOL! I was thinking the same thing when I saw Jason had electricity in his underground lair. Maybe he has a generator up and running or that old lady that knew about him had an extension hooked up from her house to Crystal Lake Camp.
Yo, Jason is a stoner in this film. You don't mess with his weed or you end up dead. I thought that was pretty funny.
Waste of a film, well not total waste since they do show boobs.
My Bloody Valentine is 10x better than this and it had better kills also.