Mediocre slasher mayhem: see Friday the 13th

Scary movies are a dime a dozen. But let's face it. Whether it's Scream or The Exorcist, most of them are more appropriate to Halloween. For tonight, Friday the 13th, there is only one choice. The original, Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th, has a legendary status. However, it cannot be overlooked that it is actually a mediocre and only mildly scary movie. Any filmmaker who wants to scare an audience can do so with the help of a skillful composer.

When a film's music is scary enough, its juxtaposition with the image of an ax is enough to send chills down at least a few spines. All throughout the film, Cunningham uses weapons, blood and scary music to guarantee an uneasy walk back home. Underneath these superficial effects, there is little in the film to provide deep-seated discomfort or psychological trauma to last more than an hour after the viewing.

The film's cheapest thrills can be found in the predictable showdown between hero and monster. As in almost every Hollywood horror movie, at some point the boogeyman is apparently dead. The camera abandons his image, but low and behold, he somehow rises up out of the ashes. Not only is this scene unbelievable, but most viewers above the age of seven-years-old have seen it happen in the movies about a dozen times.

As a result, the resuscitation of the monster comes as no surprise. Anytime a movie employs this scare tactic, the question becomes not whether the boogeyman will make a last onslaught, but when this will happen. In Friday the 13th the skillful timing of this scene does manage to provoke a cheap thrill, but a slow-motion scene diminishes the impact of even this meager effect.

The plot of the film is simple: a few teens work at a camp in the middle of the woods, while a deranged murderer lurks nearby. Uncomplicated plots are fine if the film can grip the viewer in other ways, but the film fails to do this. Because the teens are no more than generic all-American types, the viewer does not have a reason to care about any of them, even Kevin Bacon.

To watch the film is to wait for the next attack with limited interest. A mediocre script and bad acting does little to alleviate this problem. The bad guy, or actually bad gal, is scary. She is the deranged and possessed mother of a boy named Jason who drowned at the camp in the late '50s. The similarity of her character to that of Norman Bates in Psycho lessens her originality and therefore makes her less scary than she would be otherwise.

There is little in the film that is original or even interesting; but through facile effects it has still managed to scare enough viewers that its producers were able to make a ridiculous number of sequels. The film falls into all of the clich�s of the horror movie, and only manages to scare the viewer through the cheap thrills that are characteristic of the genre.