- A man in search of his missing sister stumbles across a deadly secret in the woods surrounding Crystal Lake as Texas Chainsaw Massacre redux duo Michael Bay and Marcus Nispel resurrect one of the silver screen's most feared slashers -- machete-wielding, hockey mask-wearing madman Jason Voorhees. The last time Clay heard from his sister, she was headed toward Crystal Lake. There, amidst the creaky
Art of Fighting star Jae Hee makes a welcome return to the big screen in the 2008 supernatural action thriller Mandate. His last film before heading to the military, Jae Hee plays a sword-wielding ghost hunter chasing after a manipulative serial murderer. Helmed by Park Hee Joon, who previously directed the genre-bending Pan-Asian actioner Dream of a Warrior, Mandate keeps viewers on the edge of the seat with exciting action, ghostly scares, and a mind-twisting case. The film co-stars Yoo Da In (Cind! erella) and Shim Won Cheol (Underground Rendezvous). There has been a serial murderer and rapist on the loose in Whagoklee over the past decade. With the police unable to make heads or ends of the case, most of the town's residents have moved away over the years, leaving Whagoklee in disarray. After two years of relative peace, death and terror strike the town again when two college girls are raped and killed. The police are again at a lost, but this time a mysterious ghost hunter (Jae Hee) rolls into town claiming that the murderer is actually an evil spirit.Finding your roots in the hood ain't easy. An accidental switch at an adoption agency sends a Chinese baby to an African-American family. Julian is accepted into the family and his tight-knit Atlanta neighborhood, but the search for a better life takes the family to South Central L.A., where his new neighbors think Julian is pretending to be black. For the first time in his life, Julian faces an identity crisis. "Fakin' da Funk" pokes fun at stereotypes and proves that wh! at's in your heart is what's important.SEARCHING FOR A MISSING GIRL, A GROUP OF YOUNG ADULTS STUMBLES ON THE CREAKY REMAINS OF ROTTING OLD CABINS IN THE EERIE WOODS OF LEGENDARY CRYSTAL LAKE, WHERE THEY ARE TERRORIZED BY THE INFAMOUS MACHETE-WIELDING JASON VOORHEES.If you thought a bigger budget and an A-list producer (Michael Bay) would go to Jason's head, well, forget it. The indestructible villain of so many bottom-of-the-barrel shockers isn't about to change his shtick, and the 2009
Friday the 13th proves it. This, the umpteenth sequel (nope, it's not a remake of the origin story) to the original 1980 movie, gives us a clever prologue that manages to fit an entire Jason Voorhees killing spree in a brisk and bloody 20 minutes. Jumping ahead six weeks, the film introduces a carload of clueless teens headed for a weekend at a lakeside cabin, plus a lone motorcyclist (Jared Padalecki) in search of his missing sister (Amanda Righetti). When the "lakeside" happens to! refer to Crystal Lake, of course, there can be only one outco! me. Cue the hockey mask, and pass the machete. Bay and director Marcus Nispel, who collaborated on the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, are surprisingly indifferent to changing up the formula this time, although there's more care taken in building up a few characters, and for once the comic relief (mostly supplied by Aaron Yoo and Arlen Escarpeta) is pretty funny. You might even regret the slaughter of a couple of these young folk, which is an unusual feeling in
Friday-watching. The film's Jason is quite the athletic fellow, and he's assembled an elaborate underground corpse-hiding lair in the vicinity of Crystal Lake. How he's been able to live down there for 30 years (if the film's own timeline is to be believed) and had enough unwitting campers pass by to keep himself entertained is anybody's guess. But if they keep coming, he'll keep slashing.
--Robert HortonAlso on the disc
The extended Killer Cut is 106 minutes compared to 97 for the the! atrical cut, and it's hard to imagine choosing to watch the theatrical cut if you have a choice. In addition to some more of Amanda Righetti and of Jason, the extra nine minutes is mostly more gore in the gory scenes and more sex in the sexy scenes. If you're squeamish you might not want those things, but if you're that squeamish you probably don't want to watch Friday the 13th in the first place, right? The longer cut will give you more of the stuff that you probably watch this movie for. There's also an 11-minute featurette on the new movie and three deleted scenes (a different version of Jason getting his mask, the police response to the phone call, and a revised climax). --David Horiuchi
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