2 out of 5

Directed by: Sean S. Cunningham

I know this makes me a bad horror fan, but despite some moments of the film being really fun and pleasingly methodical in their presentation, once it full-on switches into ‘slasher mode’ – which, yes, it set the standard for – the movie just seems to lose any sense of build-up or credibility.  The latter doesn’t really matter to me as a genre enthusiast, but I’m surprised by the former, especially since Cunningham’s goal, in part, was to make something more thrilling than ‘Last House on the Left,’ which, questionable sensibilities aside, maintained an effective feeling of dread throughout.

The flashback to 1958 that opens the film effectively sets the tone: some odd camera POVs tracking a happy sing-along of camp counselors, then sneaking up on a boy and girl who have crept away to get naked together.  Our POV turns out to actually be someone’s POV, who surprises the couple, but don’t seem alarmed.  …Until there’s a stabbing and a throat cutting.  Now we’re in present day – a girl approaches a diner and asks for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, which gets an hilariously unsettled response from the patrons (including the waitress actually turning down the radio to accommodate the silence); the juxtaposition of these scenes lets us know that this is probably the same camp as in the opening, and Cunningham (and Victor Miller’s script) ups the ante by having the diners wonder at the wisdom of reopening ‘Camp Blood,’ and Crazy Ralph coming out to prophesize certain doom.  Still, our girl scores a ride about halfway, during which we’re filled in on the history of continual tragedies that have plagued various attempts to reopen the camp.  All of this works well.  Cunningham takes his time with these moments, and finds the right balance between the girl’s youthful innocence and the diner’s hesitance to keep the threat seeming real and not too absurd.  The opening, in a way, also prefigures ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’s fakeout of initially focusing on Tina… who ends up not being the main character and is offed by the killer.  But Craven took that lesson and improved upon it: here, Cunningham switches focus completely to the camp once the backstory is established, and so we no longer really care about our initial girl when we eventually flip back to her fate.  So we start over a bit, tension-wise, but it’s still fairly effective as a mood setter, switching between the counselors as they prep the camp for opening day, massaging in a general sense of free-wheelingness and titillation.  Night approaches, people die one by one.  The killer is revealed… and not only is it no one we’d suspect, it’s no one we’d be able to suspect since there’s really been no direct mention of the character otherwise.  Again, this set a standard, but others have improved on it (and many have done it worse, admittedly).  However, my problem with it in Friday the 13th is that, once the bodies start to pile up, you stop caring.  This is all part of the vibe, and the ‘thrill’ is just supposed to be about what outlandishness comes next, but imagination seemed fairly limited here – Kevin Bacon’s offing was the most, ahem, pleasing because Cunningham effectively sets up the creeps – a dead body, blood on pillow – before the fright comes from a direction you couldn’t have thought of.  It’s implausible, but fun.  Otherwise it’s just some chasing, some throat slashing and etc.  And when the very human killer show their face, we still have 20 minutes of chasing and left; and now that we know who’s chasing us, it’s hard to be as frightened.

Cunningham has a deft hand at scene setup but proved unable to successfully transition it into frights and then play with the throttle to keep us appropriately amped.  The film, in general, suffers from this same pacing problem overall.  Friday the 13th absolutely has historical relevance, and its willingness to gather a whole bunch of faceless kids together and kill-em-all opened up the doors for billions of creative folk to run with the concept.  However, this may be an instance of the original not necessarily being the best example of the form.  It set the standard, but I feel others since have absolutely improved on it.