Friday the 13th
Rating: 3.5/5
By: Nathaniel Simpson
There are a couple of names that are synonymous with the slasher genre. Michael Myers. Chucky. Freddy Krueger. And Jason Voorhees. Even though Jason is one of the most iconic horror villains of all time, he surprisingly doesn't even show up in the first installment of the Friday the 13th franchise until the very end, where he drags Adrienne King's Alice into the water when she thinks she is safe from the psychotic Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) and her killing spree of the campers at Camp Crystal Lake. What I found here, which I also find throughout the rest of this series, is that while this film delivers on some pretty good kills and is accompanied by interesting cinematography and an iconic score, this movie simply doesn't contain the wow factor or the interesting qualities that the other slasher movies at the time possess.
Consider John Carpenter's Halloween and Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street. Both movies not only contain such iconic and fantastically-written killers, but they are simply a lot of fun and keeps the audience engaged. There is a certain way that Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers move in their respective films that simply work in the context of the movies they are haunting, and I don't see that here from Mrs. Voorhees. She is not a very interesting character and she lacks any real scary qualities about her. Unfortunately, that translates into the other characters that serve as the main ensemble for the film, with none of them really popping off the screen or being remotely interesting.
I think this is a major problem the filmmakers simply couldn't figure out. Friday the 13th is only 95-minutes-long, and they are trying to set up around ten different characters or so in that short amount of time. They are also killing off these characters one by one, which does take up a lot of the runtime once they get to the camp. Therefore, was the movie doomed from the start? How would it have been possible for us to care about these characters or really take any stock in them with the short time we are with them? We all love Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, and we enjoyed watching Heather Langenkamp trying to out-run Freddy Krueger. But, what makes Kevin Bacon's character here truly enjoyable and make us want to root for him?
However, with all of that being said on a story front, the rest of the movie is crafted quite well. Sure, it is at times a bore to sit through because of the lack of story or really exciting plot elements, but the cinematography and the creepy sounds and score here do a great job of crafting the atmosphere of this horror picture. The woods are already a creepy place, and it makes it even more terrifying when there is someone stalking you that you are not aware of. The camera movements and the placement of the audience really allows us to step into the killer's shoes, allowing us to see aspects of these slasher movies we haven't seen before. When we get into the killings throughout this movie, the filmmaking team, led by director Sean S. Cunningham, do a fantastic job of crafting the special effects of the murders and the tension that leads up to them.
At the same time, while the story or the characters are not very interesting, the acting performances here are fun and the actors do what they can with the script. Unfortunately, the camp counselors really start to blend together after a while, but there isn't a performance here that truly makes me dislike what they did throughout the movie. The two standout performances here are from Palmer and King, with King doing all she can to become this Final Girl and Palmer giving a creepy performance as a character that simply needed more for her to work.
It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of this franchise, but the film that started it all does have its good qualities to it. I think the movie just needed to be reworked to be a little bit longer and craft more around the story and the characters, but I think the filmmaking elements and the atmosphere they create work quite well. While Jason is a fun killer that has gained icon-status throughout the decades, I think there needs to be more attention on Palmer's performance as the iconic killer's mother.
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