Friday the 13th (2009)

Movie: Friday the 13th (2009)

Runtime: 97 Minutes

Rating: R

Genre: Horror

Let me preface this review by admitting I have not watched any other Friday the 13th movies and so I will not be able to provide any type of comparison to them. That being said, I'd like to start with the movies aesthetics. 

Summary: A young man goes looking for his sister who has gone missing at Crystal Lake, presumably a victim of the notorious Jason. He encounters a group of friends enjoying a vacation at the lake and they all end up fighting for their survival. 

I do not typically expect a lot from a horror movie, artistically speaking. It isn't that they can't have good artistic elements. Rather I tend to feel most of them don't bother with it as much as they should. As far as most horror movies I've seen go, I felt like this one did a fairly decent job on the artistic stuff. The acting wasn't all around amazing, but it wasn't really bad either. There isn't much I can say about the music, mainly because I don't remember it much. Normally I would take this as a bad sign because I tend to always notice music in movies. However I will confess to multitasking while I was watching this movie so I may have just been to distracted to notice. What I really want to mention about this movie artistically speaking is the filming and lighting techniques used. I thought that there was some excellent camera usage throughout the film that really helped to build the suspense. Suspense is a key element in this genre so finding a movie that appropriately uses camera techniques to do this is refreshing. Also this movie had some wonderful lighting usage. There was some particularly good use of back-lighting in certain scenes which I really enjoyed. 

Now the fun part where I get to tell you how I liked the movie. As someone who has watched a lot of horror films, I must say this one is pretty good. I wouldn't call it my favorite of the genre by any means, but it far surpasses most of the ones I've seen on the entertainment level. Personally I wouldn't call this movie scary, but I'm not easily frightening by movies and I suspect that others might find it much more terrifying than I did. As far as the plot and scripting go there is a bit I have to comment on. First off, while the plot is not exactly brand new, or all that in depth, I enjoyed it alright. I like the concept of a brother looking for his missing sister who has presumably fallen prey to the wicked Jason. I felt that element was a really nice touch. As far as the other characters go, a bunch of friends staying in one of their parents vacation homes, I found that a little too cliche for a horror movie. I've watched way too many horror movies that started that way. The scripting of the movie I was not overly thrilled with. There were some lines that were pretty funny, and certainly some character development that was brought out by how they spoke, but overall I felt like the script was not the greatest. There was a lot of what seemed to be unnecessary language in the film, and plenty of lines that seemed repetitious or dull. Overall though I would call this a reasonable horror movie that is a good way to kill an hour and a half if you are into the genre. I would certainly watch this movie again and would recommend it to any friend looking for a fun way to kill some time. 

For whom it may concern, this movie is rated R and it fully deserves that rating. There is violence, gore, language, nudity, sex, drug usage, drinking, terror and suspense. There was a lot of nudity in the film and what seemed like an overly prevalent usage of the f word as well as other cuss words. Characters are indicated to be using drugs and drug paraphernalia is seen. Characters are also shown drinking and participating in a drinking game at one point. Since it is a horror movie the rather graphic gore and violence, as well as scenes of terror are to be expected but should be kept in mind if you have issues with those types of things. Hopefully that will provide you with some useful information about the content in case any of the elements could affect your viewing. 

A quick note to finish this off, since this is my first review it would be great to know what people think. What do you like about where I'm going with this, what do you not like. Are there other elements it would be helpful to include in the reviews? Would you like to see a more in depth summary of the movie? More specific discussion of aesthetics? Should I include elements like costume, make up, hair, set design, etc? Should I leave anything I've included here out? Let me know what you think, and don't forget to submit some requests. You can email me at thelynx17@hotmail.com or find me on twitter; thelynx17. 

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it and that it was informative. 

-L