Friday the 13th / Jason Voorhees, he of the iconic hockey mask, currently holds the record for the number of sequels for a horror franchise, as well as the most financially successful one. Over the past 29 years, the Friday the 13th series has done everything possible to its protagonist, so long as it involved bimbos, boobs and bloodletting. He’s died horribly in nearly every installment. He’s been resurrected three times, once by lightning, once by telekinesis and once by electricity. He’s even been absent from his own series—twice.

Sure, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that fairly summarizes the series itself. Even the date for which the series is named is rarely used. Taking a cue from John Carpenter’s Halloween by putting young women in danger from a malevolent and silent killing machine, the series has churned out 11 films, including a special team-up with another killer star, Freddy Kruger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.

And let’s just get this out of the way: None of the 11 films were very good.

Part of the problem was the shortsightedness of the writers and directors. Instead of trying to advance a mythos of the character, studio heads were more comfortable giving new locations for Jason to lumber into, until it mirrored the Jim Varney Ernest Goes to… series. In the sequels he’s gone to camp, Manhattan, outer space and Hell, each time with diminishing returns and derision from critics.

Apparently, out of ideas of where to send him (Jason Goes to the Library, anyone? Or a Hawaiian version we could call Jason Goes Coconuts?), director Marcus Nispel (responsible for a similar reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) has restarted the franchise—and failed to bring absolutely anything original to the table.

The Friday the 13th series has always featured twisted cautionary and conservative morality tales of the Just Say No Reagan era. Have sex, take drugs, drink irresponsibly—and you’ll end up the victim, most likely during these immoral acts. The relaunching of the series follows that formula to the letters—in this case T&A. Show your tits, get something sharp rammed through your skull.

Nispel’s breast count threatens to surpass the body count when a group of half-wits and whores come across Jason’s moralistic wrath while on the search for some free range marijuana. Their quick and easy dispatching brings the curiosity of Clay (Jared Padalecki), brother to one of the kids gone missing. In his poking around, he incurs the disdain of the townsfolk, one of whom testily informs him that Jason “just wants to be left alone.”

But Clay continues his campaign and soon comes across a new batch of half-wits and whores, who each meet their end after making monumentally poor decisions until it’s not so much a retribution for bad behavior, but a grisly form of the Darwin Awards. So annoying are the victims, you wish the film would hurry up and end their existence, along with our misery.

Nispel’s Jason is larger and faster this time around, and seems to possess the supernatural powers afforded to him in the fifth and beyond sequels. The 200-plus pound behemoth is capable of near teleportation into rooms and rooftops without making a sound. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the film itself. Devoid of any real scares or tension, it resorts to loud bursts of sudden noise—a dog barking, glass breaking—but even these jolts aren’t loud enough to overtake the derision-fueled laughter from the audience before the last kill occurs.

---