Friday the 13th (2009)

“Friday the 13^th” was meant to be a reboot of the series and not a remake of the original film. This allowed them to take elements from the first four films and apply them in a single movie. The writers and director wanted to reexamine, update, and adjust various aspects of Jason’s mythos which left me thinking that their efforts were both cool and pretty lame at the same time. The film opens up with the events that occur at the very ending of the original “Friday the 13^th” with the showdown between a counselor and Jason’s mom; she’s still beheaded and Jason is still a witness to the gruesome act. The movie moves forward in time to when Jason is grown and begins killing people while wearing a cloth mask like the one he had in “Friday the 13^th part 2”. Jason finds a hockey masks and puts in on and some teenagers find the head of Jason’s mom, just like the events in “Friday the 13^th part 3”. Finally, a guy shows up looking for his missing sister (Friday the 13^th part 4”) and a lot more people get killed before they realize what’s going on. These were cool nods to the first few films in the series when the movies were still building a mythos and keeping to a serious horror movie vibe.

The only thing I really didn’t like about this film was seeing where Jason lived; a creepy, wet, room/tunnels of torture. The fact that he had an area to lock somebody up is not like his character at all and it really bothered me. The only time we saw a house where Jason might have lived in the original movies was a tiny hut that was set up as a shrine to his mother. That was cool and this was not. It feels like it’s too similar to all of the other hideaways that deranged movie killers have. It’s just a part of the story that I wish they had skipped.

247°F (2011)

“247°F” is an interesting movie about four friends who go out to an island for a pagan themed holiday. One of them has an uncle who lives on the island and he’s been building new additions to his house. The newest addition is a three friends who become trapped in a sauna while their drunk friend and their uncle watch fireworks and get high. The sauna continues to build heat after the trapped friends break a window for fresh air, making the room to become dangerously hot. They try everything they can to stay cool and find a way out but they are completely trapped. The end result, when the uncle finally finds them, is sad and somber. It’s a decent film in that it builds suspense and shares the big “reveal” at the end, a reveal that is believable and not a shocking twist.

The only thing that I didn’t like about this film was the main character, Jenna. We see that Jenna had a finacee that was killed in a car accident three years earlier and that she’s still pretty torn up about it. She’s taking anxiety pills to deal with her issues but decides to skip them when she is paired up with Ian. Because of her skipped her pills, she becomes the cause for the real problems that occur when she, Ian, and Renee get trapped after Renee’s drunk boyfriend Michael leaves to go get high. I just feel that Jenna’s story is weak and poorly played out. It could have been great but misses the mark.

Favorite moment - Seeing Tyler Mane in a lovable and sympathetic role as Ian's uncle.