Someone–whether it be the writers, director, producers, studio, composer, whoever–someone tried really hard to make Friday the 13th: A New Beginning a comedy. It fails miserably, but the attempt is interesting if not admirable.
Wait, it’s not because of the composer; Harry Manfredini plays it straight and ruins a lot of the scenes. Well, not exactly ruins them but he definitely works at cross purpose.
It’s hard to say if it’s director Steinmann working the absurd cliche angle; there are a handful of ambitious scenes in the film, where Steinmann is clearly trying to do something with the filmmaking (never the film). So are those moments the fluke or is the rest of it the fluke?
The actors suggest the former, just because the acting is so bad and there’s no way Steinmann wouldn’t prefer better acting in those parts. He’s got Shavar Ross, who’s annoying as all hell but he’s a capable actor and Ross is stuck in scenes without any professionals to work with. Leading lady Melanie Kinnaman is bad. She doesn’t have anything to do, but she’s still bad.
As the suspect in all the film’s ineptly cut murders, John Shepherd is terrible. Obviously Steinmann saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre for one sequence, but he also borrowed heavily from The Karate Kid for Shepherd’s scenes. It’s silly and awful and the film’s so unsuccessful, it’s actually pitiable.
Decent enough performance from Juliette Cummins in one of Steinmann’s acceptable tangents.
But it’s an awful movie. Just lame.
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