Friday the 13th 4K UHD (2009)

[Matt89]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Every time I watch the original I love it more and more. It's probably my favourite film in the franchise. I just watched the UHD (yikes lol) a couple weeks ago and yeah my love for the movie was enough to get me through that viewing.

It just has atmosphere in spades, and it carries that tone throughout the film. It also has excellent pacing for a slasher film and it sets up the lore surrounding Crystal Lake extremely well. Not to mention the film's score also elevates it and adds to the tone and atmosphere. I dunno, I just think it all comes together so well. I can see why it was so popular when it first came out (and still is). Say what you want about some of the acting lol, but this is a class act slasher film. The locations, the POV shots, the kills. It's just a great slasher film overall.

It's still a B movie at the end of the day and it is HIGH camp (Mrs. Voorhees? lol), but damn if it isn't a good one. And that's part of its charm. The remake just doesn't compare. At all. Doesn't even come close. And I don't hate the remake or anything, it just pales in comparison to the original IMO.

[Matt89]

Originally Posted by BladeRunner2007

Yes. The various locations have been captured wonderfully in the OG. The slow buildup of suspense, the constant looming dread, and the overall ominous feeling - no other F13 movie comes close.

The only one that I'd say comes close in terms of the permeating sense of dread is the fourth film. And The Final Chapter is probably my 2nd favourite entry in the franchise. It's also definitely the grimmest Friday the 13th flick.

But otherwise yes to all the above.

[Rich1983]

Originally Posted by Big_Bass_Man

@Rich1984.. Where can you find that box set.. I have the 2019 set...

Amazon.com

is there any benefit from the DVD set besides that?

This is going to sound crazy on a "Blu-ray" website, but there is a charm to seeing these films in a format that is NOT high definition. Watching Friday the 13th films on VHS and DVD has a nostalgia factor. Don't get me wrong, Blu-rays and 4Ks are awesome, but for this genre specifically, sometimes I watch them and feel that they can be too clean. When you go to a haunted house, do you want shiny mopped floors or spiderwebs all over the place? Which is more atmospheric? The same logic can be applied to horror films, especially films from years passed. Also, with films like Friday the 13th, the lack of high definition hides some of the special effect prosthetics, which can be seen much clearer in higher definition formats.

I'm not one of those people who care about "bit rate" or any of that nonsense that doesn't really mean a thing. I just care about what I see on the screen.

[Rich1983]

Originally Posted by BladeRunner2007

Yes. The various locations have been captured wonderfully in the OG. The slow buildup of suspense, the constant looming dread, and the overall ominous feeling - no other F13 movie comes close.

I think the first four all have great tension. They are definitely the strongest films in the franchise.

[DaylightsEnd]

Originally Posted by Matt89

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Every time I watch the original I love it more and more.
It just has atmosphere in spades, and it carries that tone throughout the film. It also has excellent pacing for a slasher film and it sets up the lore surrounding Crystal Lake extremely well. Not to mention the film's score also elevates it and adds to the tone and atmosphere.
It's still a B movie at the end of the day and it is HIGH camp (Mrs. Voorhees? lol), but damn if it isn't a good one. And that's part of its charm. The remake just doesn't compare. IMO.

Yes, different animal altogether. The remake goes right for the jugular. There's no real suspense or buildup or significant pov camera work. It's lean, flat and very direct with its cinematography, very little left to the viewer's imagination, and much less effectively tied to the scoring. The vintage slasher foreplay is what's missing. The history of the camp is just stated briefly, very matter-of-fact, without much later corroboration or ominous foreshadowing by other cast members throughout the film.

The original film, by direct contrast, almost has a made-for-tv 70's "mystery whodunit" flavor packed into its initial tone, with that classic build-up of suspense. It slowly but cleverly fleshes out the individual characters, the camp, and all the lore surrounding it, and never deviates, or even lets up. You can feel the very deliberate escalation and mounting tension throughout. You wouldn't be surprised one bit if Lieutenant Columbo showed up at Camp Crystal Lake after the camp cook's disappearance and started questioning the kids..... But yeah, the whole OG film experience absolutely lives and thrives on its copious gobs of atmosphere and clever, effective, economical use of the cinematography. Manfredini's fantastic scoring takes full advantage of it, and helps to elevate the proceedings significantly.

Looking back on it all, I'm actually impressed by the fact that the next three or four films in the franchise truly did somehow manage to perpetuate a decent amount of the unique, quirky, unmistakable flavor of the original film, despite having different directors, different actors for Jason, and even different shooting locations such as in the fourth and fifth films.

[KcMsterpce]

The problem for me with the 2009 release (as well as the other Michael Bay produced ca$h-grab remakes, and the current Blumhouse remakes) is that it is attempting to capture the mania of the original, but in the end it's just a cheap ripoff of a theme that has been played to death, and doesn't work for modern audiences.
When the original was released, it was the beginning of a new trend in horror "slasher" movies, spurned by the popularity of HALLOWEEN for example (which was directly inspired by - what I consider to be even more original in execution - BLACK CHRISTMAS), as well as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so on.
When I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, or THE HILLS HAVE EYES, or THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT first came out, they were shocking and riveting horror films due to the sheer audacity of what was new, fresh and unlike anything that came before.

Friday the 13th is considered one of the quintessential titles that started a new category of horror - the slasher film.
Cut to 30+ years later, and there were hundreds of copycat films. The pacing, editing, sound design, makeup FX and everything else that goes with making movies had advanced exponentially over time.
Audiences now know the formula, and they also have a new level of tolerance for style, pacing, and expectations.

The magic of the unexpected, and the unique position the original movies had is no longer relevant to modern audiences. Thus, rehashing it in 2009 was just stupid. We've seen this formula so many times before, it no longer has the luster, nor the charm of the OG.

[GaragePoet]

the most recent horror renaissance eras have been the found footage, torture porn, and we're now in the era of exhaustive remakes

[DaylightsEnd]

Originally Posted by KcMsterpce

The problem for me with the 2009 release (as well as the other Michael Bay produced ca$h-grab remakes, and the current Blumhouse remakes) is that it is attempting to capture the mania of the original, but in the end it's just a cheap ripoff of a theme that has been played to death
When I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, or THE HILLS HAVE EYES, or THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT first came out, they were shocking and riveting horror films due to the sheer audacity of what was new, fresh and unlike anything that came before.
The magic of the unexpected, and the unique position the original movies had is no longer relevant to modern audiences. We've seen this formula so many times before, it no longer has the luster, nor the charm of the OG.

This is likely why every single one of the PD big-franchise post-2002 remakes is abrupt, nihilistic and unblushingly unapologetic, in the very same manner. There's a strong focus instead on the gore, the stacking of unlikable characters as disposable fodder to fan the audience's anticipation of their brutal demise, and the crafting of over-the-top violence, all in lieu of the atmospheric, slow-paced style of the original films. The PD films ride heavily just on the long-established reputations and predictable audience expectations of the main killers themselves, in each case.

These folks have all been to a Gallagher comedy show enough to know that the audience shows up mainly to wear a plastic smock and get splattered repeatedly with sledgehammered watermelon guts, so why beat around the bush? The audience in 2009 already knows exactly what this franchise is about. Jason has by this time been pushed way into parody land by the handful of later, increasingly-weaker sequels in the franchise, and PD makes no effort to recast or re-explain the whole entire series to their audience, painfully and tastelessly. The cat is long out of the bag, and there's no chance of recreating the ambience of 1980 in 2009, as it were. Instead of going for the impossible, PD chooses to go as aggressive as possible, by amping things way up. In the course of making several such remakes in the same style, PD actually developed their own readily-discernible flavor within the genre during that 2002-2012 window. That's arguably innovative on PD's part, in and of itself. With little or no chance of re-living former glories, they forge their own more extreme path in the horror genre in general, which is almost exactly what the Evil Dead 2013 remake feels like in comparison to its own original debut film. Evil Dead 2013 even feels LIKE a PD production in many respects, for many of these same reasons.

It's actually been enough years gone by that I could see folks now forming a type of nostalgic fondness EVEN for the common chain of PD remake films, especially in light of how truly pathetic the last 10 years of horror output have been. PD's "lack of charm" is now its own charm in relation to how utterly weak, sappy, uninteresting and unengaging the majority of newer horror films have been, comparatively. I can say this....absolutely no one was uncertain of where the Hills Have Eyes 2006 remake was going, or could call it bland, weak or unengaging, after sitting through it in a theater. Granted, it was far from paving new avenues of innovative shock value in 2006, but folks were still similarly dumbstruck when that flick rolled out, for its sheer brutality.

[Matt89]

Originally Posted by KcMsterpce

The problem for me with the 2009 release (as well as the other Michael Bay produced ca$h-grab remakes, and the current Blumhouse remakes) is that it is attempting to capture the mania of the original, but in the end it's just a cheap ripoff of a theme that has been played to death, and doesn't work for modern audiences.
When the original was released, it was the beginning of a new trend in horror "slasher" movies, spurned by the popularity of HALLOWEEN for example (which was directly inspired by - what I consider to be even more original in execution - BLACK CHRISTMAS), as well as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so on.
When I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, or THE HILLS HAVE EYES, or THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT first came out, they were shocking and riveting horror films due to the sheer audacity of what was new, fresh and unlike anything that came before.

Friday the 13th is considered one of the quintessential titles that started a new category of horror - the slasher film.
Cut to 30+ years later, and there were hundreds of copycat films. The pacing, editing, sound design, makeup FX and everything else that goes with making movies had advanced exponentially over time.
Audiences now know the formula, and they also have a new level of tolerance for style, pacing, and expectations.

The magic of the unexpected, and the unique position the original movies had is no longer relevant to modern audiences. Thus, rehashing it in 2009 was just stupid. We've seen this formula so many times before, it no longer has the luster, nor the charm of the OG.

While I totally agree that it's impossible to recapture the mania of those films now due to how much they've been ripped off, I don't think that's exactly what they're trying to accomplish.

I think -- especially in the case of Halloween -- filmmakers wanted to resurrect the franchise and actually make some good sequels for a change. I mean, whether or not they pulled that off is certainly up for debate lol. But, I think they're very very aware of what they're making. So much so that many of them are self-reflexive and include references to other films in the genre.

Some remakes did a good job with updating the original material for modern audiences as well. 2004's Dawn of the Dead is a perfect example. It totally stands on its own next to Romero's original. I also think the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes did a good job at being similar to the original but also had its own angle which made it feel fresh and new.

I certainly didn't hate the Friday the 13th remake, but yeah I don't think it added much or had an original angle. And I think it was probably a bad idea to combine the plots of the first three films. And yeah I think part of it is that it kinda just rehashed the formula. As controversial as the Halloween sequels were, you can certainly make the argument that they at least tried to do something different -- especially with Halloween Ends.

[DaylightsEnd]

Originally Posted by Matt89

Some remakes did a good job with updating the original material for modern audiences as well. 2004's Dawn of the Dead is a perfect example. It totally stands on its own next to Romero's original. I also think the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes did a good job at being similar to the original but also had its own angle which made it feel fresh and new.

This.

Granted, not all of these remakes have been to everyone's tastes. I hold out the Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) re-imagining as an example, which is highly divisive. That said, I really need to revisit the NOES (2010) remake with a fresh set of eyes again soon, because I really disliked it the last couple of times I tried it on for size.

[Matt89]

Originally Posted by DaylightsEnd

This.

Granted, not all of these remakes have been to everyone's tastes. That said, I really need to revisit the NOES 2010 remake with a fresh set of eyes again soon, because I really disliked it the last couple of times I tried it on for size.

Oh boy I dunno if I could sit through that one again lol. Best of luck to you. That's one of my most hated remakes.

[DaylightsEnd]

Originally Posted by Matt89

Oh boy I dunno if I could sit through that one again lol. Best of luck to you. That's one of my most hated remakes.

I really try hard to find redeeming qualities in almost any horror flick. I can sit through, and even enjoy, mega-low-budget student-film-level schlock horror flicks that would make a lobotomized yak vomit, like Scalps, Creepozoids, Boggy Creek II, Breeders (1986), Bloody Moon, etc., but I could barely sit through NOES 2010. What does that say about it?

[rocknblues81]

Originally Posted by MaxRenn

Woah woah - I must clarify. I really like PT2&3 and still watch them all annually, even Manhattan and X. But the first, which I still enjoy, I find underwhelming. It had a unique charm amongst its mediocrity though.

For the record I view Final Chapter as the quintessential Friday, Lives as the most overrated and New Blood as the most underrated.

Jason Lives is great. Awesome soundtrack, plenty of violence, fun characters, some fun, but there are also some serious parts. New Blood has a better looking Jason, but eh... The film has early 90's teen com fluff characters. I guess it was ahead of its time in that respect . The gore is neutered, and it has a darker tone, but in a very one note kind of way. Much of the good is about waiting for the Weekend at Bernie's guy to get his. The problem is that the payoff isn't as good as it could have been. It being a Carrie knockoff is kind of a mixed bag.

[GaragePoet]

Jason Lives could essentially be shown on cable TV w/ little to no editing for content, and that's a huge strike against it. it consistently resides near the bottom of the pile for me

[steev210]

Originally Posted by Matt89

Oh boy I dunno if I could sit through that one again lol. Best of luck to you. That's one of my most hated remakes.

I'd agree, with 2005 remake of The Fog being a close second.

[Winslow Leach]

My most hated horror remakes are the awful When a Stranger Calls and Prom Night.

[DaylightsEnd]

This line of conversation is making me really crave (probably very unlikely) uhd releases of some of the less popular but still highly entertaining horror flicks of the early-80's era, like The Beast Within (1982), Prowler, Humongous, The Final Terror, and Just Before Dawn, just to name a few. It's sad that so many of these flicks have suffered the tragic loss or destruction of their OCNs, and that the final remaining elements are typically in fairly poor condition, from most accounts.

[Winslow Leach]

Jason Lives is my third favorite Friday film, after the first two. Friday is actually my second favorite horror franchise, after the Scream series.

[DR Herbert West]

The Day of the Dead remake seems to be almost completely forgotten. That would rank pretty high on the bad remake list for me.

[Matt89]

Count me in as someone who also loves Jason Lives. Yeah there's no nudity but...that was the entire point. There's a sex scene where both of the characters are nearly fully clothed!! The whole scene is hilarious. "You're the best! The best!" when it looks like the worst sex ever. And then the guy cums prematurely? Lmao. So stupid and so funny. If people didn't get that joke then I really don't know what to tell you because the fact that there's no tits in this movie was absolutely intentional. Easily one of -- if not THE MOST -- intelligent entries in the franchise. They knew exactly what they were doing when they made that film.

And the reason it doesn't have a ton of gore is because of the MPAA, which affected ALL of the films in the franchise.