Jason Voorhees is Back in Friday the 13th Remake With Real Heart

“It’s a throwback to the originals,” Righetti said. “You still play to that audience that is built-in, that grew up watching Friday the 13th and are huge fans of it, but also the new generation who maybe hasn’t seen the old 1980 film.”

In this version, the camp is in ruins when Clay (Jared Padalecki) goes searching for his sister (Righetti) at infamous Crystal Lake although the authorities and locals advise him to stay away. Clay meets a group of college kids partying at a lake house.

It’s the typical formula for a slasher movie and guessing who dies in what order. What’s not to love?

“You know going in it’s Friday the 13th and if there are 13 characters in the beginning, there aren’t going to be 13 at the end. So you know people are going to die.” Padalecki said. “But I like that when it gets down to business you don’t know who it’s going to be. It sort of keeps you guessing, and that’s the idea.”

Not only does this one wrest some fresh thrills from a tired formula, it does so largely without resorting to the more sadistic style prevalent in contemporary horror. In other words, the movie emphasizes the chasing and the killing, not the suffering, which makes its brand of mayhem easier to take than the degradations that dominate the Saw cycle.

But then, Jason has always been a traditionalist at heart. He also remains impossible to kill, which is bad news both for Clay Miller (Jared Padalecki), the brother of a missing young woman who was one of the unlucky pot-hunters, and for a fresh batch of ill-fated hotties partying at a cottage near Crystal Lake.

Scenes of binge drinking and topless wakeboarding provide respites from the requisite series of gory murders. Besides deploying the genre's usual devices (e.g., cellphones with no reception, faulty flashlights, swift punishment for the horny), the movie also makes good on the old stage adage that if a wood chipper is introduced in the first act, it will be used in the third.