Five years ago Michael Bay and director Marcus Nispel brought us a new vision of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and now they want to take us back to Camp Crystal Lake as various promiscuous twenty-something's are hacked-up by our hockey masked slasher, Jason Vorhees. They've brought in all the sub-genre elements you're expecting from the dumb characters, high body count, and many scenes of naked breasts; however, they've also made Jason way too smart for his own good, given the film that grainy washed-out look a lot of modern horror movies ascribe to, and failed to give us a 'Crazy Ralph' character to warn our soon-to-be victims of a "death curse".

There's a fairly lengthy pre-credits sequence that starts off harkening back to the original film (where Jason's mother is beheaded) before a group of partying, marijuana seeking campers are hacked to bits and it's during this first fifteen minutes or so that I knew there wasn't really going to be much in the way of attempts to change the formula the series has (mostly) tread on for the last, almost thirty, years. But after seeing Jason jumping between bodies, going into space, and fighting Freddy it was definitely nice to see him back to his old stomping grounds.

After our opening massacre we flash forward to six weeks later and are introduced to a by-the-book batch of college students who are heading off to a cabin for a weekend filled with drinking, smoking, and f*cking. We're also introduced to Clay (Jared Padalecki, faring better than his "Supernatural" co-star Jensen Ackles did in fellow remake, My Bloody Valentine) who's come to town looking for his missing sister. Of course they're all going to end up isolated together in the woods and, of course, Jason is going to turn out to be more than the urban legend they'd heard around town.

There are a lot of deaths on display in this twelfth (!!) entry in the series and while most of them sport pretty decent practical effects by Scott Stoddard they're just not as brutal or original as I expected. They're just your typical scenes of Jason using things like a machete or axe and lack the creative dispatches of previous films (the tent pole from Jason Goes To Hell or the party horn from part seven). Nispel also tends to shoot a lot of it pretty tight which makes some of them more of a "what just happened?" blur than I'd of liked. But at least scripters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (who penned Freddy Vs. Jason) seem to enjoy playing on slasher clichés even going as far as making almost every character in the movie do at least one dumb ass thing while being chased by our hockey masked behemoth. They've also peppered a lot of references to the earlier films for fans even having Jason wearing a grungy pillowcase (like he did in part two) until he finds his iconic mask in a junk-filled attic.

And speaking of Mr. Vorhees, the role this time is played by Derek Mears who manages to be imposing due to his sheer size but doesn't bring quite the personality Kane Hodder did in the earlier entries. Padalecki, as mentioned, is perfectly acceptable as the films hero while Travis Van Winkle does well as rich jerk Trent and Arlen Escarpeta gets a chuckle or two during a goofy comic relief moment involving a box of tissues and a Sears catalogue.

The 2009 version of Friday the 13th certainly can't top the original. Hell, it can't even top some of the sequels (most notably parts four and six) but it did make for a fairly entertaining ride. I'm not entirely sure if former music video director Nispel was the right choice to direct as I found his framing to be too claustrophobic and a lot of his shots to be bland and I had some issues with the fact Jason basically has an underground labyrinth below the camp, but the makers have at least brought Jason back to where he belongs: Crystal Lake.

For the "Killer Cut" available on DVD and Blu-Ray they've added back in nine minutes of footage with brief extensions of some scenes, a bit more blood in the kill scenes, and an additional moment where Jason is sharpening a machete while having flashbacks of his mother's death. It helps give the movie a bit more muscle and I did find myself enjoying the film a tiny bit more. (Chris Hartley, 2/17/09 - DVD, 6/13/09)

Directed By: Marcus Nispel.
Written By: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift.

Starring: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle.

Picture Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: For a movie that spends much of its time in the dark, Friday the 13th looks very good on DVD. The picture is clean and sharp and I didn't notice much in the way of jags or compression issues.

Extras: There's a bit less in the way of special features here than I was expecting as we merely get an eleven minute featurette entitled "The Rebirth of Jason Vorhees" which is your basic EPK material and watchable if nothing new. We also get three deleted scenes, one of which is an alternate death scene of a character which isn't as good as the one they used.