Cheap Excuse

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Friday the 13th - Movie PosterFRIDAY THE 13TH (2009) is a movie so bad that only a few groups of people will want to see it: friends and family of the cast and crew, movie reviewers, and, oh yeah, TEENAGERS.

The original version came out in 1980, and so any teenagers who saw that movie when it was released would be in their forties now, and they might want to see just how it has been updated, but the only reason that I saw it was that the equipment broke down for the movie that I intended to see and review.

Another group of people who might want to see it are those voyeurs who enjoy lots of shots of bare boobies and gruesome murders, but most of them are probably teenagers anyway.

The story begins on June 13, 1980, at a place called Crystal Lake. and we see a woman crazed by grief confront some other people and shouting, “Jason was my son! You should have been watching him!”

Jason, of course, is Jason Voorhees, the mad slasher in this series of slice-and-dice teenage thrillers, the one who wears a hockey mask as if he is afraid that his victims might be able to identify him.

Then we jump forward to “Present Day” at Crystal Lake and watch the first group of victims, consisting of three guys and two girls, and then get way too much exposition about the first series of murders.

Well, guess what happens.

Then it is six weeks later and seven more campers show up, as well as Clay, the brother of one of the girls who is still missing from the first group six weeks earlier.

This group, however, isn’t camping out in the woods, but staying in the fancy cabin owned by the family of one of them, a real obnoxious jerk who you just can’t wait for him to get his.

As always, the only suspense is which one will be killed first and which one will be the survivor.

Now, however, we get some topless water-skiing along with the not-so-scary individual trips up into an attic or out to the toolshed in the dark.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009) will probably be loved by teenagers but hated by everybody else, because it is just a cheap excuse for profanity, nudity, and other teenage thrills, and I am not a teenager.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”