Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Deeper into Movies 5

Friday the 13th (2009) - Why did I go see this movie?




It is a well-known fact that the whole Jason Vorhees franchise was a knock-off of John Carpenter's still outstanding Halloween, so I can hardly be expecting much going in to see this movie, can I? But even by the minimal standards of the slasher film, the new Friday is formally incoherent and, well, silly. Effectively, we get about three movies in one, a good five people are killed before the long, long opening credits, and oooooh the killing stakes. Obviously, girls who have sex (a lot of tit shots in this movie, including a gratuitous naked-in-the-lake-with-a-machete-through-her-head that can appeal only to the really discerning necrophile) get the chop/machete, antler (I kid you not) first. We then take care of the ethnic minorities (a nerdy Oriental, a competent African-American), and we are left with the unpleasant rich guy, his pseudo-girlfriend, and the brother-looking-for-his-sister (who turns out to be alive). You can guess how it ends.

The really odd thing about this movie is its humour and its horror. Its humour: firmly stuck somewhere in American Pie and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (the latter film I actually quite enjoyed) - lots of jokes about masturbation, sex dolls and pot smoking. The horror: by current standards, quite tame and uninventive. Something else we can, um, credit the Saw films with.

And yet this is still a better movie that Benjamin Button.

Meanwhile, Infinite Thought gives the insufferable prat a much-needed, and, all things considered, moderate castigation. Shall we begin a much needed Facebook group - Let's Castrate Alain De Botton??

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