On the other hand, as the blood starts to flow, the movie loses its head. The acting goes south (not that it was great to begin with), and characters' actions serve as a primer on how to get killed in a slasher flick. (Lesson one: Close the curtains of two windows in a house, observe a body thrown in through a third, and position yourself directly in front of a fourth. Lesson two: Block the entrance to one door with furniture but completely ignore the other nearby entrance to the room you're inhabiting.) The movie finally evolves into a cat-and-mouse game that manages tension at points and leads to a finale that may rip off Carrie, but at least does it well. In the end, Friday the 13th simply falls victim to the cinematic slayer that's plagued slashers almost since their inception--it sacrifices style in the name of blood and gore. At least it took until the second half of the movie for it to do so.

RATING

There are people dying on the screen, but they die in such numbers and in such frequency that this can be neither horror, nor slasher; it is simply splatter, and at its worst, if it wasn't for some nice camera work and the scenery. This movie actually feels bigger than its above cited nemesis, which is merely due to the set. Also, there is some nice and sublime work with light and darkness, but that's it. Where's the music, by the way?

Badly acting younsters with ridiculous 70s hairdo and outfit being chased by some killer, well, there are things more interesting than that. But everything aforesaid could still be improved by a good ending. But what we see happening here is perhaps the worst possibility come true: What could have stayed a dream sequence, and a perfect one, develops into a pseudo-Mike Myers spawning a movie series. That hurts, and it ruins the rest of the movie: you get the feeling that the rest was irrelevant as the only sense behind it was an ending aimed at allowing a sequel to exist; an ending which doesn't seem to fit into the entire movie. A movie which introduces the supernatural element as a quick fix at the end feels like cheating. Boogieman ex machina.