LogFAQs > #979837814

And I know the twist ending is supposed to be iconic, but the last twenty minutes of the film introduce a character that we have not met before, who shows up, announces her tragic backstory to justify becoming a murderer, and then she chases Alice through a series of repetitive and clunky attacks that are nowhere near as violent or effective as the seven other camp personnel shes killed up to that point. Its just weirdits like the movie completely changes its tone and plot style once there are no more disposable characters to kill off, and it leads to a bizarre ending that still manages to take WAY too long once the Pamela Voorhees reveal takes place. Even the jump scare ending feels cheap, since its all a dream (which maybe Im watching a different cut of the film, and the true ending is her getting grabbed, but either way, it feels like a completely unnecessary addition to a movie that hadnt really had anything supernatural up to that point.)

Snake - Its really hard to discuss and talk about this film in a modern context. It just feels so - banal. It doesnt help that it feels like Friday the 13th has been made and remade again & again in the decades since its release. What feels cliche now is only in retrospect, a fact thats a little hard to fault the actual film for. And yet, with this banality, comes a strange nostalgic magic to the film. Theres a strength in its simplicity, not flashy, but focused on brutal kills & traumatic events all perpetrated by this mother in a nice sweater. Before the franchise devolves into a sloppy supernatural-tinged goofy mess, theres a real gravitas here thats absent in pretty much all future films with maybe the second being another exception. While that has its own appeal, it loses the sense of vulnerability and real-world horror that the initial 1980 installment captures so well. So while I dont think Friday the 13th is a particularly strong film on its own, I do enjoy it in the context of the franchise and as the confident stepping stone the slasher genre took and smashed ruthlessly into the ground.

Bitto - Rating: D

It's a fine slasher with teenage victims. My problem is that I just really don't like these types of movies. The setting is nice. The characters are about par for the course for a movie of this kind. The kills are generally interesting. Jason's mom is a good killer; though, her fight scenes are a little comical when they show her stumbling to fight Alice as opposed to being from her POV. None of it really resonates with me. In a gauntlet, I always feel like there's one movie that just blends in with the rest and this one felt like the one for me this time.

I'm very glad we did not go with Cannibal Holocaust being on this list, because I could barely handle a real snake being killed.

Evilordexdeath - The story goes that after the success of Halloween, whoever made this film wanted to rush out a knock-off as fast as possible for profit. idk if that's actually true at all but my American friend who loves sitting through shitty horror films keeps telling it to me.

While the first person shots from the killer's perspective are used to mask the plot twist that ***HUGE spoilers*** it's actually his mom killing everyone in this film, it still marks the world's introduction to the abstinence-themed superhero, Jason Voorhees. Do you think the contrast of sexuality and violence in this film is just used to titillate viewers with these two visceral concepts, or is Jason's tendency to murder kids who sleep together a reflection of the prudism embedded in the American psyche since the days of the Puritan frontiersman?

It's tempting to ask questions like this to try and spice up the task of writing about this profoundly mediocre film. This is like the platonic ideal of mediocrity: the acting and cinematography are super cheesy, the characters are neither lovable enough that I wanted them to survive and felt tension as Jason...'s mom was creeping up on them, nor really hateable enough that I wanted them to die. The scares are always undermined by the over the top strings and the most creative kill is someone getting stabbed in the neck from underneath a mattress - almost all the others are just a "default" stab in the chest or throat-cut. Even the plot twist completely lacks impact because the killer was in like one scene before that (At least I *think* they were one of the people in the pub near the start but I honestly can't say for sure) and the final confrontation between them and the last survivor girl drags on way too long and is honestly really lame until the funny head chop that ends it off. It's one of those movies that isn't really bad, but you almost wish it were because that might at least be interesting.

Plasmabeam - Somehow I managed to spend 34 years on this planet without watching the original Friday the 13th. Honestly I wish I had kept that streak going. This movie is dogshit until Mrs. Vorhees arrives, and even then she barely rescues it from landing at #30 on my list.

Rockus - Its still kind of odd that the first film in this franchise is (largely) without the unstoppable monster that its known for. The twist that the killer was Jasons mother all along is still a pretty good idea however and one of the better aspects of the movie. While its still mostly pretty competent, and not quite as bad looking as Sleepaway Camp, it isnt anything special either. A serviceable by the numbers slasher that hasnt even found its iconic monster villain yet. But then again Im not really crazy about this franchise on the whole anyway.

Lightning - But then hes still there.

In 1978 John Carpenters masterful Halloween brought the slasher genre into the public consciousness with quite possibly one of the best horror movies ever made. The end result was of course a host of imitators attempting to cash in and just two years later Friday the 13th was released. This was not a film with a strong vision behind it, in fact they came up with the title first, advertised the film in the trade press and then hastily made the film around it. The result of this was a bland, uninspiring film that took all of the wrong lessons from its predecessor.

This is a film that has none of the style or excitement of Halloween, there are a few nicely done sequences of the killers perspective and one big scare at the very end but otherwise it is not much to write home about on a technical level. The idea of the killer is the most interesting thing about this film and makes the way the franchise went afterwards thanks to that final scare kind of disappointing. Even then however, the film undercuts its own mystery by setting up a whodunnit where its impossible to figure out who. The great Tom Savini is on makeup here but its a far cry from his best work. On the subject of effects it also should be penalised for the completely unnecessary killing of a snake, which the handler supposedly did not know about and was very distressed by. Also, the film fails to use its setting to its advantage other than the killers motives, the cast featuring a young Kevin Bacon could be anybody and the kills, even the famous Kevin Bacon death, are largely just boring deaths by sharp object.

The film is not awful, some of the long shots are really effective, the cinematography giving a voyeuristic feel like you are the stalker. It mostly just feels quite mediocre and uninteresting, which is all the worse for the fact that this is supposedly comfortably the best in this longrunning franchise. Overall this film was not actively distasteful, just thoroughly uninteresting.