Film

Horror movies want to become franchises—mainly because the shrewd ones provide simple satisfactions. Guy with knives for fingers haunts dreams. Torture master teaches painful lessons to dumb-ass teens. Why not make another one of those?

In this respect, Sean Cunningham’s 1980 slasher, Friday the 13th, is the anomaly. Yes, a summer camp makes an inspired stalking ground. But the movie’s machete-wielding killer—tweaked over the first two sequels into the hockey-mask-wearing Jason—is poorly conceived and the slays are underwhelming. Can producer Michael Bay actually have fashioned an even more generically dull version with this reboot? It’s pretty close, but yes. This time, two sets of blithe kids face evil. First comes a group of pot-patch-seeking campers, who unnecessarily introduce us to the legend and are quickly dispatched. Then there’s an SUV-full of unlikely survivors led by the spoiled and arrogant Trent (Van Winkle), who goes head-to-head with a biker (Padalecki) searching for his missing sister from the original party.

Director Marcus Nispel distinguishes his take with some gratuitous toplessness and a smidge more character development. Mostly, though, this is your typical loud-noise springer. One unfortunate soul is dangled over a fire in her sleeping bag (nice), but even on its own terms, Friday the 13th is too harshly edited to be witty. And didn’t Chekhov have a rule about introducing a wood chipper in Act I? Ultimately, the new movie seems destined to become exactly what the last one was: a sleepover rite of passage, specifically the moment when discerning viewers realize they can do much, much better.