Clay Miller is looking for his sister who has been missing since she went camping six weeks ago. He arrives in the area where she was last seen and is handing out flyers and knocking on doors asking residents for help, but not making any progress. He crosses paths with a group of people partying at a lake house, but unfortunately Trent, their leader, wants nothing to do with Clay or his search and sends him packing. Jenna, however, is a decent person, and she leaves her friends to help Clay search the surrounding area. Together they find an abandoned campground and a rundown house nearby. Jason Voorhees emerges from the woods carrying a dead body over his shoulder. This Jason is a bit different than earlier incarnations, as he is now more intelligent and clever enough to set traps while using a series of abandoned mining tunnels to keep ahead of his prey. Clay and Jenna race back to the lake house to warn the others, but the group is already under attack. What follows is series of elaborate set-pieces that include a nice spin on the traditional Final Girl concept.

The first decade of the twenty-first century found Hollywood remaking classic hits, including Halloween, My Bloody Valentine, The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. By the time the producers got around to Friday the 13th, they faced a dilemma: a direct remake of the original film would alienate the legion of “Jason” fans whose iconic lead was not an active participant until the first sequel. The solution was to pull elements from the first four entries in the original franchise and offer a “terror casserole” filled with greatest hits now assembled in one new presentation.

The story moves at a rapid pace but suffers under an unusual five-act structure. The plot involving Mrs. Voorhees is reduced to a two-minute set of clips interspersed with opening credit title cards that is likely confusing to newcomers. The action shifts to Whitney (Clay's missing sister) and friends getting attacked by Jason, and it is twenty-three minutes into the film before we see the title Friday the 13th appear on screen. At this point, the movie starts over again by introducing a new set of friends that we follow for the remaining hour of the picture. This approach is both jarring and frustrating, as we now have three sets of underdeveloped characters to keep up with. Similar structural problems plagued Rob Zombie's Halloween remake and while Friday never sinks to that level of incompetence, there is a palpable feeling of a giant missed opportunity here.

The horror genre is particularly guilty of following trends and cashing in on someone else's success. This was as true of Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980) as it is of Marcus Nispel's remake almost three decades later. Cunningham cashed in on the success of John Carpenter's Halloween and Nispel is still pulling tricks from the same bag he brought when directing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake six years earlier. Slick camera moves and some mean-spirited kills are delivered to the attractive protagonists, but the film isn't particularly scary. The picture is frequently gorgeous, thanks to the legendary cinematographer Daniel Pearl (Pathfinder), but the end product is just empty.

Damian Shannon and Mark Swift's script is something of a mess. This new Jason starts out promising as a survivalist who is quite resourceful and wise enough to use one victim as bait for the next, but pauses to kidnap a girl and keep her alive for six weeks. It is never addressed what he was doing with her all this time, either pampering her or assaulting her, an exploration of which would benefit the character. It’s worth pondering that Jason can hit a moving target in the head with a single arrow when he has only one good eye. Some fans complain that this Jason runs, but in the past (Friday the 13th Part 2, Friday the 13th Part III, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter), he clearly chased women and ran from the cops. Jason can teleport around the lake house undetected and I can appreciate the abandoned mining tunnels but question how he can know people are in his house and make a detour while killing people at the campsite in the prologue. Of course, these are the same screenwriters who decided to suddenly make Jason afraid of water in Freddy vs. Jason.

On a positive note, there is some decent gore and a surprising level of nudity to keep things interesting. The best thing about this movie is the cast, who are down for anything. Jared Padalecki (Supernatural) stars as Clay, the earnest guy desperately looking for his missing sister, Whitney, played by Amanda Righetti (Return to House on Haunted Hill). Danielle Panabaker (Piranha 3DD) vies for Final Girl status as the lovely Jenna, joining Clay on his search when her friends prove unhelpful. There are two standout performances, Travis Van Winkle (Transformers) as uber-prick, Trent. This guy is seriously the worst and viewers will be rooting for Jason to kill him, violently. Which leads us to the most important cast member, Derek Mears (Predators) as Jason. Mears shines in the role, making it his own. His Jason is a leaner, faster, more intelligent anti-hero free to run and kill with ease. It is too bad no sequel followed, since Mears is so good in the role he deserves another round behind the mask.

Friday the 13th (2009) is the most expensive and best-looking film in the franchise. It has great production values and fun murder-set-pieces. The problem lies with the undercooked script, which starts off promising with its opening act but takes too long to recover the momentum of the first twenty minutes. The franchise has been mired in legal troubles between its creators for years, preventing further films. It is surprising that this remake has been the final word in an undying franchise for fifteen years and counting. This new 4K boosts picture quality and finally adds some much-needed supplemental material making it the definitive version worth adding to your collection.