In a review for Friday the 13th, Tasha Robinson not only rips apart the remake of a classic horror film (or rather, slashes it with a machete), but goes about picking out the bits and pieces of it that make it so generic and stupid and unoriginal that what the film comes down to is a typical silent moment, then BANG, a killer, blood, and loud shock music to boot. Cleverly put, this movie is simply "another generic entry in the franchise, as Jason slaughters his way through one group of interchangeable twenty-somethings who wander into the woods." This generic blueprint continues, for "this film operates like a vending machine: put $10 in and it spits out some prepackaged toplessness and gore."
The more I think about it, the scarier Hollywood is getting....really? We have to keep churning out the same stuff over and over with no originality? If Friday the 13th is as it sounds, I must have seen this movie a million times! So why won't it change in a new direction? What keeps this type of film so grounded in it's no-name cast, extreme gore, and gratuitous nudity?
2 comments:
But repetition is what Hollywood has historically always been about. Remember the factory system model we discussed. What you are describing is a successful genre film. The business calls for it to be "the same stuff."
This is not how Hollywood is "getting". What you described as "no-name cast, extreme gore, and gratuitous nudity" is the very generic conventions of the slasher genre going back to Craven's LAst House of the Left and the original Friday the 13th is the perfect exemplar.
None of the above should be interpreted as me approving of the rash of horror remakes -- or of the general state of horror today. This is definitely a topic we'll revisit on Friday.
Well, I'm glad Jim said it, because I about blew my top over this review.
I don't like to be the DB who pimps his own stuff, but if anyone is interested in a genre-friendly F13 review, you can check mine out. I certainly didn't love the film, but if you're a critic who's going to bash a slasher for being a slasher, well then you're just being lazy in my book. We also got a pretty big response to the film from our readers, which in and of itself was pretty interesting with regards to how self-identified horror fans felt about this reboot.
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