Director: Marcus Nispel
Cast: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Aaron Yoo, Derek Mears
Have I Seen It Before: Oddly enough, yes. There’s a moment when—before I met Lora, and I mean like weeks or days before I met Lora—where I could get talked into going anywhere, and seeing practically anything.
I’m not sure what I was doing there, but I sat through the film, and I haven’t remembered a bit of it since.
Did I Like It: I tend to play a little bit of a game whenever I subject myself to one of these films: Just how quickly will a Jason Voorhees rampage lose me? They all do, eventually. I’ve now re-watched all eleven films in the series, just to be sure. But this one loses me by putting Nana Visitor—she of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame—in it, for just a few minutes, and dubbing over her with a Betsy Palmer-soundalike, and then dispensing with her as fast as is humanly possible.
Boo. I say, boo. Not, Boo! It’s not scary. I view this movie with scorn, and I did so real fast. There was a point where I was floating above the movie and forgot that Jason (Mears, wither thou Kane Hodder?) was even in the thing. It is forgotten, and justly so. I’m pretty sure whatever shape Crystal Lake takes, but it will make me mad.
But I come here not only to bury Caesar (or Jason), but to praise a little bit. This series is rotten to the core, and always has been. What’s more, the makers of this film appear to agree with me. To paraphrase Jean-Luc Goddard—mainly by way of Roger Ebert—the best type of film criticism is to make another film. The first three films in this series were so insubstantial and forgettable, this film does it’s very best to zip through the entirety of those films in the first twenty minutes.