Do horror movies work when the monsters are no longer horrifying? I would argue for the negative, although Jason Voorhees’ fans, who cheered his very appearance in the rebooted Friday the 13th, would argue in the other direction. In their twisted worlds the machete-wielding murderer would have been knighted by now — Sir Jason, Lord of the Welsh Farthing, cousin of the Duke of Westerly. Sainthood would not be far behind. 
In any case, Jason is no longer a villain to his core audience; he’s decidedly blue-collar. Horrors don’t work when audiences cheer for the bad guy, especially since great pains are undertaken to introduce good guys, in this case (and in all cases for Friday the 13th movies) hormonal teens screwing around near Camp Crystal Lake, the site of some grisly murders decades back. So they have two-track minds (drugs and intercourse), but the movie requires us to care for their well-being, otherwise the scares don’t work because the victims might as well be ottomans in an Ikea display, just meaningless things. 
In the original Friday the 13th from 1980 — way before Jason went to Manhattan, Hell and space (in that order) — Jason’s mother was the bloodthirsty killer; she sought revenge against the camp counselors that let her little boy die in the lake while they were playing naked Twister in the bushes somewhere between the archery range and the whittling den. Jason and his hockey mask didn’t actually appear until Friday the 13th Part II. With the remake, the original movie’s entire plot has been relegated to the opening credits, ending with Mrs. Voorhees’ head being separated from her neck in a method not recommended by most doctors. And that’s where this one picks up, basically at Part II. 
It’s been untold decades since the Camp Crystal Lake murders, and the camp, totem poles and all, is overgrown and rotting by the festering marsh they call a lake. College kids searching for a hidden field of marijuana stumble into the camp and find Jason, who hacks up all of them save for one that he wraps in her sleeping bag and barbecues alive. Six weeks later another group of college kids venture into town to party at a rich father’s cabin. They also trespass on Jason’s right-of-way and meet grisly ends. The movie is a series of encounters with Jason, who has to one-up only himself on torture and killing devices — from screwdrivers and elk antlers to the machete that severed his own mother’s head, an implement that proves 98 percent of Freud’s theories true. 
This time around, though, the hulking and massive Jason, who was a supernatural force in the original series, is rebooted as a severely disabled (and semi-mortal) orphan, who probably doesn’t understand the concept of his mother’s death. With Jason’s newfound transience from the original series, one gets the impression that with some therapy and some wabbits he might make a convincing Lennie for a production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I liked mortal Jason, and I liked that his behavior could be counted on. He's written with a Norman Bates-like crush on his mother, which would be even more twisted and deranged had he actually vocalized his feelings, but instead he skulks around silently with apparently no will, or mouth, from which to speak. I can see why fans appreciate the Jason character — he's dependable — although I will never understand how he has risen to cult hero status.
The college kids, with their floppy hair, Greek letters and sandals — just asking for some chest ventilating if you ask me — do everything that they’re supposed to do in movies like this: the men use drugs, the women show their breasts, they all wander out in the dark for no reason, they investigate strange noises, they never run faster than Jason can walk … it’s all a very defined routine, like they’re caught in the groove of a record and can’t get out. And the record came out in 1980. 
One character, the Funny Asian Guy, doesn’t even have the ironic foresight to laugh when he says, “I’m going to the toolshed and I’ll be right back” … with a hedge trimmer rammed through my ribcage. Then there’s topless water-skier, the Hot Blonde, who is too dense to realize her nakedness just guaranteed her skull-splitting demise. Or the woodchipper operator, who forgot to install the “This Woodchipper Must Be Used As a Weapon In the Climax or Not At All” plaque to his machine's operating panel. Or the Witty Black Guy who acknowledges he's the only black character by making obtuse references to his blackness. Finally there's Girl's Boyfriend, who's like 28 years old but has apparently never had sex before, which is why he tries way too hard to get in the sack with his virginal co-star. That last douchebag has the movie's best line: staring up at a naked girl's chest he says, "Your tits are stupendous." The movie's writers must not have wives or girlfriends, because if they did they'd know better than to call breasts "stupendous" in fear of never seeing another pair again. I'm way off topic, but all these characters and their horrible dialogie are horror-movie clichés and the movie doesn’t even avoid them, or at least poke fun at their expense. It presents them as legitimate developments in a plot it's calling fresh and orginal.
Full-blown aggravation, though, set in when I realized that this could have been a reinvention, not just a remake. Yes, the film needs to acknowledge its roots by setting up dopey twentysomethings like lambs to the slaughter, but here those roots are deified for the faithful fans who expect nothing less. Yes, a remake is a very literal word: the film was made over again, as in re-done, re-filmed, re-examined. But usually such things are done to involve us in more story, better special effects or just something that the original didn’t have. This Friday the 13th lacks nothing that wasn’t in the first franchise. Yes, the mood is scarier, the violence a bit more visceral, and modern cinematography has nailed nighttime photography, but otherwise there’s nothing new that warrants more Jason. It’s frustrating that with so many horror writers working in Hollywood, none could come up with an original premise for the veteran slasher — at this stage even Jason should be bored. 
The movie is rebooted by Marcus Nispel, the same guy who rebooted the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. Nispel has done something appalling: he’s remade the two franchises the same way, nearly overlapping them in fact. In both, the villains are large, beastly men who are mentally challenged as well as mentally deranged. Both have signature weapons: Jason uses a machete so large it probably serves no purpose, and Leatherface uses a chainsaw in a part of the Lone Star State where there are no trees. Both films feature run-down houses with macabre shrines made of questionable bone and skin fragments. And both films are nihilist by design, with characters and villains who represent nothing but their own ends. Even the horror feels like black voids of emptiness.
Jason kills out of necessity perhaps, and Leatherface out of dietary requirements, but I can't say they kill for thrills — they're too emotionless and disabled to experience any emotion that might be mistaken for happiness or joy, or even just some kind of bizarre violent perversion. Truth be told, they kill to fulfill the fans' urge for blood, which is why I will never trust the opinions of gore-hounds — their appetites require only blood and every plot they endorse is just a vehicle for more carnage.The horror genre is desperately waiting for its rebirth. Don’t break out the cigars, though, for Friday the 13th.
