'13th': A Horror, but Not a Good One

Michael Bay is destroying America.

Maybe that's too harsh.

Michael Bay is destroying horror films. Better.

Michael Bay is destroying horror films by exhuming the genre's standard-bearers, stripping them of genuine terror and conceptual earnest, 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 and glistening but its presence inanimate, unthreatening and, most of all, sad.

In this young century, Bay has already produced the remakes of "The Amityville Horror" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." He will remake "The Nightmare on Elm Street" next year. This weekend offers his throttling of "Friday the 13th," the 1980 movie that spawned the immortal, hockey-masked slasher Jason Voorhees.

If you love America, you will not pay to see it.

To be sure, the original "Friday the 13th" is no masterpiece. It's a dimwitted "Halloween" wannabe. But it attains a workable level of campiness and squeezes in one good shock at the end. It feels raw and dangerous and shoestringy.

Bay's remake, also titled "Friday the 13th," is a seminar in cultural decay. A bigger budget means smaller returns in quality. Better technology means blander camerawork. Hotter actors means hollower screen presences. More story means less fun.

The movie opens with a 25-minute prologue. Repeat: a 25-minute prologue. A group of hot friends in search of free-range marijuana stumble into Camp Crystal Lake, where 29 years ago a young boy (Jason) drowned, which prompted his mother to carve up a bunch of counselors, which prompted a sole survivor to decapitate her, which prompted Jason to somehow return from the dead to continue the vengeful spree, which prompted an endless movie franchise.

These pot-pursuing friends are murdered in horrible ways. One girl survives but is imprisoned by Jason. The title "Friday the 13th" flashes on the screen, and the audience guffaws at the film's audacity. The previous 25 minutes were no more than a dastardly tease! Maybe this movie will go for broke. Maybe this "Friday the 13th" will succeed as neo-slasher hyperbole, both an indictment of the genre and the fullest expression of it. (Apologies for already terminating the suspense.)

The story jumps forward a month. The captured girl's brother (Jared Padalecki, from the CW series "Supernatural") comes poking around Crystal Lake. While posting fliers for his missing sister, he hooks up with a group of hot friends who are on their way to a cabin in their black Cadillac Escalade. The same fate awaits.

Co-writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift and director Marcus Nispel can't decide whether to make "Friday the 13th" a homage, a wink-wink riff or a twisted exploration of mommy worship and sibling neglect, and they certainly don't know how to weave these strands together. The movie has a couple of half-laughs, zero scares, only one moment of artistically inventive slaughter and only two scenes of marginal titillation.

"Only two scenes of marginal titillation." It's depressing to have to hope for some skin, but what other lurid pleasure exists in mainstream, mass-produced horror movies these days? If you can't shock me with gore, adrenalize me with suspense or tickle me with camp, at least show me tanned, toned, well-lit slabs of young Hollywood filet.

Michael Bay is destroying me.

In an era when the psychologically provocative "Saw" movies have wormed their way into our nightmares, in an era when even comic book movies are terrifying, Jason Voorhees needs to be permanently retired. If he learns to stop jabbing needles in people's eyes, maybe he could take up knitting. It would be so much easier to plop into an Adirondack chair on the quaint shore of Crystal Lake than to struggle to stay relevant 30 years past one's prime. Perhaps Michael Bay could join him there, toes in the water, enjoying the spoils of his box office, away from us, forever.

Friday the 13th ( 97 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for strong bloody violence, sexual content, language and drug use.