Jared Padalecki in Friday the 13th. (Courtesy photo)

Directed by: Marcus Nispel
Starring: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Aaron Yoo
Rating: R

When you get down to it, horror movies may just be the easiest of all genres to pull off. Expectations start low, for one thing. So do budgets. All you really need to do is exceed some easy-to-exceed expectations and you’ve got yourself a decent horror movie. And the secret to exceeding expectations? It’s not a great villain, or gore or sex. It’s all about timing—how creatively you time the scares and, in the case of body-count exercises such as Friday the 13th, how creatively you time the deaths.

It’s no great surprise that the new Friday the 13th drew in the kinds of record audiences it did. What’s so surprising is that such an easy exercise in the easiest of genres turned out to be such a brain-crushingly bad movie. I went to the movie in what I really thought was the right frame of mind, bringing along those low expectations. All you have to do is kill 13 pretty, shallow pubescents with a little bit of style. Heck, all you really need to do is send a camera running in the woods with a terrified party girl or boy in front and a knife-wielding psycho behind. Add the good timing and you’re all set.

It’s really something, when you consider that none of the Friday movies that came before this were any good either. Let’s be clear here: the first Friday the 13th was already derivative, coming two years after the far superior Halloween. It wisely chose its location —a summer camp—and did supply one fun twist. But otherwise it was nothing special. This one really is a sequel, not a remake. It relies heavily on some tried-and-true bad horror conceits:

The police are utterly incompetent. Here, they’re supposedly looking for five missing campers, yet overlook clues like, oh, an entire house. The same house that every other person who stumbles into those woods seems to find.

Jason tromps along at a pretty easygoing pace, yet manages to travel impressive distances at speeds that threaten to break the sound barrier.

The prospective victims don’t just contrive awkward methods of ending up alone in scary locations; they linger there. And they talk to themselves. A lot.

Rest assured, this Friday the 13th is not meant to be a black comedy. It’s made by two men—producer Michael Bay (Transformers) and director Marcus Nispel (Texas Chainsaw Massacre)—who are about as funny as tooth decay. It’s also not so-bad-it’s-fun, like last month’s Taken. The violence is mostly offscreen, and the fairly abundant nudity is utterly joyless. Trust me, topless waterskiing is not sexy.

There are some talented people in the cast, including square-jawed Jared Padalecki of Gilmore Girls and Supernatural fame, Amanda Righetti of The Mentalist; Aaron Yoo of Disturbia; and Danielle Panabaker of Sky High. Those are four pretty good people, yet they make barely a dent in the badness.

It’s been an unpredictably successful year for Hollywood so far. But there will be a price to pay for this. When movies like Friday the 13th, Medea Goes to Jail, Taken, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop all become such huge successes, the keen minds at the movie studios will do their best to replicate them for at least the next two years. I really thought that audiences were showing some real refinement over the past few years in choosing their mainstream movies, rejecting obvious money grabs and embracing thoughtful storytelling. I haven’t seen Paul Blart or Medea, but if Taken and Friday the 13th are any indication, refinement has gone the way of the VCR.

Oh, the plot: five young adults go into the woods near a place called Camp Crystal Lake to find a secret marijuana plot. They get slaughtered. Seven more come along and, because we need to make sure that 13 people get killed by the end, a weird local and cop are thrown in. The marijuana plot is never actually taken advantage of, leaving room for a possible sequel—or at least a spinoff.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for many years.