The first trailer for Marcus Nispel’s remake of Friday The 13th is now online.
We’re actually surprised that it’s taken so long to show up online, to be honest, given that this is the same trailer that lucky Empire readers got to see back in August at our Movie-Con event.
But here it is, at long last, and it’s a good ‘un. Nicely atmospheric and with some nicely-lit shots a world away from the amateurish sheen of the 1980 movie, it’s an intriguing blend of the old and the new, with a creepy voice-over from Mrs. Voorhees (played here by Nana Visitor, although the dialogue is almost verbatim from the original) introducing the new iteration of her slash-happy son, the hockey mask-wearing psycho, Jason.
And then we get to see some very quick shots of Jason, lurking in the shadows; of counsellors around Camp Crystal Lake, unaware of their impending doom; and, finally, an impressive shot of Jason about to machete the hell out of a poor girl who, in pure Friday The 13th tradition, has fallen over while trying to run away.
Oh, and we also hear the creepy Friday The 13th theme – that whispered ‘cha cha cha’ which is as effective as any horror theme of the last 30 years.
Kudos to whoever cut this trailer for avoiding the obvious route – the trailer for the original Friday The 13th was simply a spoiler-ific rundown of the deaths from the movie. And while that might still be the case with the second trailer, we’re glad that the teaser has plumped for mystery and atmosphere ahead of gore and cheap thrills.
On a technical level, this looks like it’s light years beyond Sean S. Cunningham’s movie, with Nispel using shadows particularly effectively. But, of course, we’re not going to rush to judgement yet – after all, he directed the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and in the end that turned out to be markedly inferior to its progenitor.
However, despite the affection that Empire holds for the Friday The 13th series, the first movie is pretty damn clumsy and so the odds are good that this remake could actually be an improvement. We're particularly intrigued by the hint that both Jason and Mrs. Voorhees play a prominent role in this one - in the first Friday, of course, Jason didn't appear until the very last shot, leaving it to his mum to run around stabbing and slashing and hacking and chopping.
Click here to check it out for yourself.