.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

For those of you that may have been born after the first Friday the 13th hit theatres back in 1980, you may not understand the fascination with the whole thing. When released, the movie was nothing short of a phenomena. We had seen horror films with serial killers prior, but Friday the 13th brought something new to the table. It was teenagers all sexed up and being off-ed one or two at a time. It was an axe to the head in slow motion. It was nudity and gore all to a chilling score. And, when it was all over, it was a woman - an older woman who was the mass murderer.

It was also a horror film where the biggest jolt comes at the end. Sure Carrie did the same, but the ending of Friday the 13th has to rank as one of the scariest of all time. You didn't expect (well, not back in 1980) to see something come flying out of the water in the form of a deformed young boy. It was a shock that had the audiences scream in unison.

That was the first time we saw Jason Voorhees and he took over as the killer from his beheaded mother in Friday the 13th Part II released one year later. Jason was a skilled killer. A monster with a mask. Sure, James Bond gets the song Nobody Does It Bette in his honor, but who can argue that Jason wouldn't win if the two ever faced off.

Jason in fact has killed over 150 people in 9 films (II - X) topping out at 24 kills in FT13th Part IX. And talk about a killer McGuyver! Jason has used a machete, knives, spears, barb wire, a hacksaw, ice picks, a harpoon gun, an axe, a dart, a bottle, a pitchfork, a sleeping bag, a scalpel, a tent spike, a cleaver, a corkscrew, a pipe, a guitar, electricity, garden shears, a road flare, a syringe, a wrench, a barrel, a desk post, a machine gun, a drill, liquid nitrogen and even his bare hands in his reign of terror. Nobody does THAT better.

He has been in 3-D (Part III) and has faced off against Freddy Krueger. And even though he can act better than Paris Hilton, there are no hand and machete prints on a Hollywood sidewalk bearing his name. Well, not yet anyways.

It has been a while since the 'final' Friday the 13th film. Not counting Freddy vs. Jason, Jason X released in 2001 was the last time we got to watch our hockey mask wearing baddie chop up the unsuspecting. And that was in space!!

However, with the re-launch of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre being a success a few years back, it only made sense to jumpstart another iconic killer. And why not the most famous.

Friday the 13th (2009) is your typical horror. It doesn't dare to be anything more or less and you have to appreciate it for its homage simplicity. The film starts out as expected. Jason is in the woods. Teenagers are in the woods. Bad things happen in the woods.

Camp Crystal Lake to be more specific. It is here that Jason drowned when Camp Councilors were up to no good instead of watching over the young kids in the lake. Its here where his mother was beheaded while Jason watched. And now, it is where he lives and kills.

In updating the franchise the makers of the 2009 version said they wanted to make Jason smarter. He was a boy that grew up in the woods so he should be able to set traps. To think things out. The old Jason was just an unstoppable force that continued to kill and kill even while his own body was being destroyed. This reinvention was suppose to bring a different Jason.

It did not disappoint.

Lucky for Mr. Voorhees, Camp Crystal Lake is now the home of some wild marijuana that grows in the forest. What better way to lure teens to go camping in a place where history dictates you should stay away. Far away.

For the first four visitors, this lesson is learned the hard way and Jason gets rid of them one at a time. Ahhh, good to have you back boy.

It takes Jason about 20 minutes to get rid of the first four teens and that meant 20+ minutes before we finally get to see the opening title credit line.

With a brother looking for his lost sister and a new group of unsuspecting horn-dogs in the Camp Crystal Lake area, Jason can go about doing what he does best.

When rating this new re-vamp, I cannot commit to being scarier than the first. But director Marcus Nispel (Pathfinder) keeps to all standards - flashlights that don`t work, people who run up when they should run out and of course, cell phones without range.

But all that didn`t seem to bother me (or clearly the audience) much. I was there to get back to random killing that is done quick. Not torture porn but good ole hackem and leave em. To this, the movie didn`t disappoint.

Jason uses his machete, a screw driver, an axe, an arrow and whatever else is available to him to reek his havoc and luckily for us males, a lot of this is done in between gratuitous nudity shots that also harken back to horror films of yesteryear.

My only reservation was in the ending which everyone will see coming. Of course, they have to set it up for another run of successful sequels, but this seemed forced. Take that and a few bits of terribly written dialogue and you have a half descent horror film.

Not one that will stand up to years of scrutiny, but one that was well worth the money and in this genre, you don`t get to say that much.