Look out for more coverage of
Friday the 13th in our magazines

THE MOVIE: Friday the 13th

THE STARS:
Jared Padalecki • Danielle Panabaker • Aaron Yoo • Amanda Righetti • Travis Van Winkle • Derek Mears
DIRECTOR: Marcus Nispel

THE CONCEPT:
Searching for his missing sister, Whitney (Reghetti), Clay (Padelecki) travels to Crystal Lake where she disappeared. Against the advice of the police and warnings from the locals he, with the help of Jenna (Panamaker), a college student in the area for an all-thrills weekend with her friends, search for the missing girl, but none of them can imagine what terror is in store until they meet Jason (Mears), who stalks them individually with his machete.

U.S. RELEASE: February 13 2009, Nationwide
• Rated: R

THE COMMENTS:

MARCUS NISPEL:
“What you do when you make a movie like this is ask yourself, ‘What is it about the mythology that makes people want to watch it over and over again?’ Then you make sure you give them what they want, but not exactly what they expect. That’s what makes it fun.”

JARED PADALECKI:
“Before I got the script my thought was, ‘Man, I really like Friday the 13th, but I had seen the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that the Brad Fuller and Andrew Form had made and I loved it. So it was exciting to read the script and sit down with Brad and talk about making this real. It’s so funny because we were filming a movie about a guy who’s important, and who is going to go kill everybody in the woods, but we’d sit down and it would be like, ‘This doesn’t feel real.’ This is Jason Voorhees, it’s not real!”

AMANDA RIGHETTI:
“I’m a bit of a sissy, I can’t watch Horror movies, so when I first heard about this I had to run out and find Friday the 13th but insisted on watching it when it was daylight out, and had all the curtains open for fear that I would be traumatized and have nightmares.”

DANIELLE PANABAKER:
“We just saw the movie the other night and it’s still pretty scary, even though I knew what was going to happen, I’d been there when we were shooting. I knew when the scenes were coming, but I still screamed and I still jumped, so I don’t think being in it desensitized me at all.”

DEREK MEARS:
“Scott Stoddard, the make up effects artist, in my opinion is 50% of the Jason character, with his amazing designs. I went into his shop, I still hadn’t officially signed for the part yet, and he showed me the designs for the character and talked about what he wanted to do. And he goes, ‘Hey man, since you’re here, why don’t you try it on?’ I went, ‘What?’ He brings out this giant case and pops it open, and six masks are in it. Everybody in the shop, people who were working on body parts and making vats of blood, stopped and looked over, and I put it on and I stood there for a second and I could see this slow grin start happening on everybody’s face as they looked at each other.”

NISPEL:
“[The screenwriters] never refer to Jason as the monster or the villain, He is the anti-hero. And that is what draws me to these kinds of characters. I’m not generally that interested in supernatural characters. What’s scary for me is that somebody like Leatherface or Jason could be my neighbor.”

PANABAKER on getting knocked out during shooting:
“It was in a scene that literally is in film for maybe five seconds. I’m running between Jared and Travis from upstairs to downstairs, and because we were fighting the sun coming up, we were rushing and Travis ran into me by accident and I hit my chin and blacked out, all very dramatic. But I felt like I was one of the guys after that, like I had my battle wounds.”

RIGHETTI:
“Derek was amazing, he comes from a stunt background so he’s very aware of your personal space and he was very adamant about rehearsing things so people wouldn’t get hurt, and it was really refreshing to have somebody like that, because he knows he’s a big guy, and some people have no sense of their space or how they relate to people. He was always asking, ‘Are you okay?’ I want to make sure you’re not getting hurt.’”

MEARS:
“I’m 6’5” and Jared is 6’4”, and the producers were saying, ‘Oh, they’re both big,’ and I’m like, ‘No, it’s great because in the original Jason is not a super out-of-this-world giant, I mean he’s a big guy, but as a fan I wanted to see someone go toe-to-toe with him to see what happens.”

PADALECKI:
“Derek is incredible. I have lines, and I get to use my facial expressions, and he just expresses so much with his movement. When they called, ‘Action,’ and I was looking at Jason, I was like, ‘Ha! I grew up watching you,’ so that was really cool. But it was really comforting to work with him because we had a couple of fight scenes, and [in one of them] I had sand in my eyes and I couldn’t see anything and I’d slip and he’d pause, holding me and pulled me back up on my feet, and I’m 220 pounds. He’s like, ‘I gotcha.’”

RIGHETTI:
“It’s definitely a new spin on an old story, and for me I think I was really pleasantly surprised because when you read it on paper you imagine it a certain way, but once you get the whole cast together and you finally see it come to light, it really brings its life in such a different way.”

MEARS:
“I had dinner with Brad and Drew, the producers, and they were like, ‘Hey, you’re really nice.’ I said, ‘Thanks, man.’ They said, ‘No, you’re really nice, are you going to be able to switch?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s called acting. I don’t have to be the character 24/7.’ I have friends who play similar roles and they want to stay away from the cast to add intensity, but my philosophy is we are trained, professional actors and we should be able to get to that point where on- camera you’re working, and off-camera it’s play time.”

PADALECKI on how the audience cheers when someone is killed:
“When I was young and saw these movies I wasn’t a cheerer. From what I can remember, I think cheering is pretty recent. I think you’d be like, ‘Oh no,’ now it’s like, ‘Yeah!.’ Maybe that’s [saying something about this this] generation.”

Written by Judy Sloane. Back to top

Visit the official Friday the 13th site
Images above © New Line Cinema
Feature © 2009 Visual Imagination.
Not for reproduction.

Keep up with the latest movie news, reviews and features with every issue of Film Review and the Film Review Yearbook (Jan 2009 - available as a PDF)

VI DIRECT
Stores Info

You can order any of our magazines via this
secure service.

To SUBSCRIBE to
FILM REVIEW, use these
links to our stores: