Oh my goodness. Well needless to say watching a 3D film in 2D is always going to be problematic. Just in the opening scene we have long drawn-out shots of sheets blowing out at us, we have a pole pointed out at us, we have the camera focussed in on foreground cans on the coffee table and we have a TV aerial being adjusted so that it points out at us.

Prior to that, this film decides not to begin with a mash-up of the first two films but instead starts with just the brilliant climactic scene of Part II. A pretty good choice I feel, as this nicely gets us caught up on what is going on and ready to begin.

Eventually we come to be introduced to the brand new campers, only this time there's no real indication that the place has a long history of murders in spite of the pretty massive death toll in the previous instalment. The only indicator is the appearance of a brand new madman warning the campers that they're all going to die. It was pretty annoying having this newcomer act suspiciously like the previous madman, particularly since he appears to be sleeping in the middle of the road in the woods. - But he manages to hold out a detached eyeball to the camera in a very big "helloooo to those watching this in 3D" way. Not quite as daft however, as the yoyo later on.

The characters aren't entirely flat, but essentially the most interesting character decision is the inclusion of a geek who likes to dress up in horror costumes. Unfortunately the way he keeps trying to scare people by pretending to be a murderer or a victim ends up feeling rather contrived, but worse still, he's just so ridiculously whiny. And when his reaction to a girl's matter-of-fact, but pretty polite, refusal after he basically begs her to sleep with him is "bitch" I pretty much lost any respect for his character.

Anyway, sorry if this acts as a spoiler, but anyone who has seen ANY promotions for pretty much anything related to Friday the 13th has almost certainly seen the big hockey mask. As such, I don't think it's unfair to reveal that this is the first film where that element is introduced. It actually comes from the geeky character's little box of tricks. This film also appears to suddenly make the big baddie shaved bald, which wasn't the case in the previous film.

Still, while the previous film was keen to keep the baddie's face mostly under wraps, this one quickly seems to have him desperate to take it off and show his face. Towards the end we even have him wandering around unmasked and waving at a remaining camper.

The final ending seems to try to mirror the final ending of the first movie and I suppose it deserves some credit for trying something new. In the end though, it feels far too half-hearted. Attempting to resurrect the other baddie character from the first movie (I'm avoiding spoilers as best I can here) turned out to be a bad idea, particularly when done this cheesily with extremely poor effects.

Leading up to the ending, the whole run around just had me bored. There's just nothing terribly interesting about it.

This is not a good film. It could have been worse, but not much.

My review is here:
fatpie42.livejournal.com/150435.html