Friday the 13th (1980) is not a good movie.
There. I said it.
And I mean it, too. Not with any kind of intended snobbery, but more of an exclamation of disappointed surprise. It's downright boring.
I love slasher movies, and have a nostalgic fondness for the slashics. I love camp; Nightmare on Elm Street is my favorite franchise, and the Evil Dead movies are an absurd joyride (tree rape aside, yuck).
I saw the original Halloween for the first time during quarantine, and was struck by just how good the movie is by even traditional mainstream standards. So when our kids asked to watch Friday the 13th on Friday, January 13 I enthusiastically agreed. Thanks to Movies That Made Us and my devotion to practical effects I had high hopes, but those effects, and the revelation of Pamela Vorhees as serial killer, are the only elements worth watching.
Overall, the movie is dull, which is a feat in a film full of pretty, horny young people in a secluded location. Just as things get interesting the film will kill its own momentum by spending several long, excruciating minutes watching Alice walk back and forth in the cabin kitchen. Whether she's making instant coffee or trying to hide from a deranged murderer, the tension is the same: nonexistent. It is a movie desperately in need of an editor.
Doesq anyone actually enjoy this movie, or have people been faking interest for 43 years because of gatekeeping in the horror community?