Why I Haven't Seen the New "Friday the 13th"

...or, Slasher Movie Rant

Hold on a sec, let me explain

No good can come out of identifying yourself as a fan of slasher movies. At best, you’ll be seen as a juvenile with no taste. At worst, you’re a sociopathic degenerate not to be trusted with sharp objects. And who can blame the genre’s critics? Most slasher films fall into two categories:

1. Cynical attempts to make a profit through slashers’ characteristically low budgets. It doesn’t cost much to film a guy in a mask chasing a few teenagers, and producers know that they can make back their budget long before word gets out that their movie is a piece of crap. This type was most common back in the 1980s, which gave us such classics as He Knows You’re Alone and Cutting Class.

Still better than Benjamin Button

2. A more modern variety: Geeky fanboy tributes jammed with genre in-jokes. Often billed as horror comedies, usually neither scary nor funny. These films are more interested in securing a cameo from the star of Candyman than in actually entertaining anyone outside of the horror convention circuit.

Not to name names or anything

And worst of all, many slasher fans really do conform to their stereotype. Getting a tattoo of Jason on your forehead and writing YouTube comments about how cool it was “that 1 time Fredy cut that bitch” doesn’t really help the cause, guys.

Nevertheless, I do consider myself a kind of fan of the genre, partly due to the few slasher films produced with actual craft (the original versions of Black Christmas, Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc.) and partly due to the cheesy, nostalgic appeal of those films’ sequels and imitators. So it took a good deal of self-control to keep myself from going out this past Friday (the 13th) to see the new version of Friday the 13th.

More self-control than I like to admit, actually. To me, Jason was the face of slasher movies long before I had actually watched one myself (my first being Halloween H20, which I still think is pretty good). The hockey mask would pop up in comic strips, video games, advertisements, Halloween costumes—pretty much everywhere, actually. Jason was more than just a character in a cheap movie series. He was a ubiquitous icon of late-20th-century American culture. When I finally watched the first few Friday the 13th films, they unfolded more or less how I had always imagined they would, delivering simple, archetypal storylines and the occasional campfire-story thrill.

Seriously, everywhere.

The later films in the series, though, abandoned the basic atmosphere set up in the earlier entries, becoming convoluted and overly tongue-in-cheek. So when I heard over a year ago that a remake was in the works, I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe a complete overhaul was what the series needed. Maybe, after twenty years, we’d finally have a worthwhile return to Crystal Lake.

And that hope might have driven me into the theaters on Friday if I hadn’t felt the same way about Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake.

Hey, I thought, Zombie actually cares about making good horror movies, and he really respects this material. And it’s not like all remakes are bad; just look at John Carpenter’s The Thing, right? Sure, Zombie seems to be making some big changes, but maybe that’s what the series needs. I’ll give him a chance.

So I gave him a chance. I went to see Halloween (2007) on opening night. And I learned my lesson.

The new Halloween, and the new Michael Myers, were fundamentally different from the series and the character that I had enjoyed. Zombie’s ideas might have worked in their own film, but instead they had been awkwardly shoehorned into another movie’s structure, where they didn’t belong. And the worst part was that Zombie’s Myers would define the character in the minds of young audiences and, since the remake made so much money, in future sequels. The haunting boogeyman of the original films was finally, effectively, dead.

God damn it.

And really, what did I expect to happen? Did I think Rob Zombie’s interpretation of the concept was going to be exactly the same as mine? Maybe I would have preferred to have Gus Van Sant remake Halloween shot for shot?

The Halloween remake convinced me not to see the Friday the 13th remake because it proved what I should have already known: That remakes aren’t going to be good just because you want them to be. Carpenter’s The Thing wasn’t based on a film that had a built-in, loyal fan base. (Right? Correct me if you can find any Thing Halloween costumes from 1981.) Carpenter got to make his own film using an idea he thought was interesting—and he knew that his film would be judged on its own merits. On the other hand, the Halloween remake was a freakish hybrid of Zombie’s ideas and Carpenter’s, because if the previews hadn’t looked at least a little like the 1978 original, the whole point of the production—brand loyalty—would have been defeated. Today’s horror remakes are intentionally based on well-known properties so that audiences feel they’re going to get more of what they like, but there’s no incentive for the movies to actually deliver. Remakes (and sequels, and adaptations, etc.) get made because, like cheap slasher movies, they don’t have to be good to make money.

So I decided not to pay for a title. I treated the new Friday the 13th the same way I would treat any non-remake: I decided whether or not to go see it based on the reviews. And in this case, the reviews said it sucked. So I didn’t go.

Of course, one way or another I’ll probably end up seeing it at some point, and when I do, I’ll be sure to let you know how much it sucks. The important thing is that I know it will suck, and I’m a lot more interested in seeing new movies, with new names, that are actually supposed to be good.

Hey, when’s Trick ‘r Treat coming out?