Friday the 13th (2009) Critic Reviews

However, this film is (be)head and shoulders above the recently reanimated likes of "Prom Night" and "My Bloody Valentine."Read the full review

While it's billed as a "re-imagining" of the horror franchise, this Friday is more like a rehash, delivering just what you expect and nothing more.Read the full review

Michael Bay is destroying horror films by exhuming the genre's standard-bearers, stripping them of genuine terror, refusing to either re-create faithfully or reimagine boldly, and upping the irony until the original concept stands rigid like a taxidermied grizzly, its teeth bared but its presence, most of all, sad.Read the full review

If all you're looking for is breasts, blood, and gore, this film hits pay dirt. None of the killings are terribly inventive, but they are plentiful, and why bother being devious when axes, machetes, knives, and pointed sticks will do the job just as well?Read the full review

Not fun, louder than it is scary, not even all that gory, this new Friday the 13th has Jason, all right, but otherwise it's missing nearly everything that made the original films work.Read the full review

It's business as usual at Camp Crystal Lake, with very little in the way of fresh jolts or an innovative visual style that would have really revitalized the hokey franchise.Read the full review

There's an itch for this kind of material, and here it is scratched -- to the bone.Read the full review

The reboot of the "Friday the 13th" series is a pretty big mess - not particularly scary or interesting or even gory by 21st century movie standards.Read the full review

As in his "Chainsaw" remake, Nispel's scare tactics amount to little more than carefully timed cattle-prod shocks, aided by high-volume speaker blasts that were beyond the budgetary reach of the early '80s films.Read the full review