It is one of the movies that always got me so excited I couldn’t wait to get inside the theater to see it. Most of the time after leaving, I couldn’t wait to get back in and see it again. The Friday the 13th series has always been a bright spot for me. Even the bad ones felt like they had potential on the way in. So why could I not feel the same way about this one? I did my best to not look at it as a remake and just enjoy it as maybe another version of Friday the 13th. The only problem with that is the movie wouldn’t let me.

By now, most of us probably already know there are aspects of the first few movies in this film. I mean you have to introduce the mom, show him with the sack, and then throw in the hockey mask. So that does put us well into the third film. There is also the storyline of a brother looking for his sister and that was actually something in the 4th installment of the originals. So how do you put four good movies together and make them work in one film? I wish I had the answer, but this is how the “fine” folks at Platinum Dunes decided to go about it.

The movie starts on Friday the 13th in 1980 with a younger woman running through the woods on a stormy night. She stops along the edge of a lake and then we see and hear (unfortunately) another woman telling her how she has killed all the others and she is the last one. As she goes to make her move, the young woman lops off the head with a machete. Hope I didn’t ruin anything for anyone with that shocker. We then see a small thin set of legs show up next to the beheaded body. A childlike hand then reaches out on the ground and pulls up a locket that must’ve belonged to the deceased. In it is a picture of the head and a small boy.

Present day comes along and we see a group of young adults making their way through the woods. We then discover that they are in search of a relaxing outing with great rewards. Apparently there is a marijuana field somewhere in this area that they plan on turning into a small fortune. They get a little turned around and decide to camp for the night and look for the pot later. There are two couples and the geek at this little event. Night comes and they sit around a small campfire as the geek goes on about a story of a woman who went crazy and killed a bunch of counselors somewhere in this area. Then he continues to tell the story of how the son, Jason, actually came back after seeing his mother beheaded. After he tells the story one of the couples decides to make their way out into the wilderness for a nighttime hike. The other three campers stay at camp, but shortly after it is brought to the attention of the nerd that it would be better if he went elsewhere. He takes off with his iPod and as he is relieving himself in the woods, he comes across their little treasure crop. While he is inspecting the plants, he realizes first hand that Jason isn’t a legend.

We then see the two hikers have made their way to Camp Crystal Lake. They are looking through the cabins and come across a small bed with “Jason” engraved in the headboard. We then flashback to our other couple getting really busy, but they are then disturbed by the noise of rustling outside the tent. The brave man ventures out to make sure it isn’t the nerd spying on them and stumbles across the marijuana and then what is left of his friend. He tries to make it back to the camp in time, but is caught in a bear trap just along the edge of the clearing. He does see that his girlfriend has had a a run in with Jason though. We then flash back to the camp where now the two hikers have investigated enough and find a locket. The guy jokes how the girl looks like the woman in the jewelry and tells her to hang onto it. He continues his search and calls her to come in and see something in the bathroom. There is a hole in the wall and he thinks there is some sort of doll’s head inside. He reaches in and…well it isn’t a doll’s head. Suddenly the door of the cabin slams shut and a machete starts poking up through the floor. I’ll jump a little more ahead now.

Six weeks later finds us following another group of kids into the same area. They stop to get gas and run into Clay (Jared Padalecki), who is handing out flyers in hopes of finding his missing sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti). Seeing the flyer we realize this is the same person who had taken the locket earlier. The young jock Trent (Travis Van Winkle), rudely asks Clay to move along because they have places they need to be. There is a small confrontation, but Jenna (Danielle Panabaker), who is Trent’s girlfriend, intervenes. Trent and the gang head off in their SUV and Clay hit’s the dusty trail on his motorcycle in search of his sister. Of course the cabin the group is going to is located along the side of Crystal Lake and it is also the same area in which Clay continues his search. Clay ends up running across  Jenna at the house and is treated rudely again by Trent. This causes Jenna to help Clay as he searches for his sister. There is one problem with that and that is they are on Crystal Lake and Jason is still out there.

The acting was pretty weak. I despised the opening scene. If you can’t at least come a little closer to the basis of this whole stupid remake then do it another way. Not that the series is known for it’s great writing and acting, but the way this was diced up would’ve actually made the Jason I grew up with proud. Padalecki and Panabaker weren’t bad and I did like seeing the familiar face of Travis Davis, but that really wasn’t enough.

So onto what the series is known for, the kills. They didn’t skimp on them, but some of them lacked the creativity that I always liked in the movies. I’m not saying they were all just small cuts and beheadings, but they just seemed to miss this obvious way to keep me interested. I did enjoy a sleeping bag scene, but not as well as THE sleeping bag scene. Plenty of blood and impalements, but nothing too out of the box.

In the end it is really hard for me to like this movie. I mean it was hard for me to work up the nerve to just put aside my biases and sit through the movie and try to enjoy it, but when I don’t care about Jason in a Friday the 13th movie, something is seriously wrong. This Jason was not the Jason I grew up with and this was far from the Crystal Lake I dreamed of one day finding. There were moments were it seemed like I was getting cliff notes of the originals, a red barn here, a guy telling the Jason legend there, even an arrow scene right after finding the hockey mask (another poor excuse for creativity), plenty of examples of how sex only leads to death, but that wasn’t enough for me to want to forgive this movie for ever being made. Is it a good horror movie? It is decent. Is it a good retelling of my favorite series? Not even close.