Director: Ronny Yu
Cast: Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Ken Kirzinger, Robert Englund
Have I Seen it Before: Yes. It feels like one of those movies where, considering that I lived in a dorm room from the fall of 2003 through the summer of 2005, somebody somewhere must have had it playing on a DVD player.
Did I Like It: It’s sort of mystifying that a film can both feel like it wastes no time at all, and spends the films first several minutes with an extended voice over narration explaining how we’ve gotten to this point.
This is especially baffling when there is no conceivable way that this film could find an audience that wasn’t at least nominally keyed into the basic elements of Kruger’s back story. It’s especially telling that Voorhees doesn’t get the same treatment, because it is a little known fact that the Friday the 13th series not only has no backstory whatsoever, but in fact no entry in the series has been produced from a screenplay, outline, or cogent thought*. Yes, they eventually throw away a couple of lines of Voorhees’ convoluted origins, and even revisit those in a Krueger-influenced dream, but who really cares?
Ultimately, this is a disheartening way for Englund to bow out of the role (it might be the best entry in the Friday series, although I inexplicably have fond memories of Jason X (2001)), especially when he delivered his franchise-best work in the immediately preceding Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994).
One more thought before I leave: The characters—yes, there are a motley crew of teenagers to sleep and be dismembered throughout the film, although they could be cardboard cutouts for all the film cares—cheer on the “joy” (and boy do I use that term loosely) that is Everclear. Has anyone ever bothered to drink Everclear outside of the early to mid 2000s? I honestly don’t think I was handed a bachelor’s degree and the manufacturer immediately went out of business. It might be that no one outside of college, or those who view mouthwash as “too sweet.”
*One wonders whose side I’m taking in the whole “vs.” question?