As a young girl, Kelsie Voorhees watched as her grandmother, scream queen Deborah Voorhees (“Tina”, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning), was brutally murdered by an obsessed horror movie fan who took his love for the Friday the 13th franchise too far, referring to Deborah as “Tina” as he lived out his own Jason fantasy. Thirteen years have passed and the police never caught the killer. Kelsie is now a cage fighter who teaches self-defense classes for women, but she’s also a horror movie actress like her grandmother, starring as “Dash” in Bloodlust I, II & III. After Kelsie’s grandmother died, fellow scream queen Dee Wallace (E.T., Halloween II, Cujo, The Howling) became like a surrogate grandmother to her, watching over Kelsie and making sure she was safe. However, on this 13th anniversary of the murder, the killer appears to have returned, looking to satisfy his obsession once again. When the obsessed fanboy was a kid, his father would lock him in the basement whenever he was bad, and the only thing he had to keep him company was a stack of VHS tapes…the complete sagas of Friday the 13th and Halloween. The characters soon became his family who he would write to, but they never wrote back, and now he’s out for revenge. As the fanboy hunts down the actors, he refers to them by their character names rather than their real names. So when he kidnaps another “Tina”, actress Lar Park Lincoln of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, this puts Kelsie and many other former horror actors on high alert, especially as they start to receive their own threating texts and phone calls. Can they stop this murderous fanboy before they become his next victim?!

Looking at the trailer for 13 Fanboy, I wasn’t expecting this to be a big budget film, but rather more of a campy parody/homage to the 80’s slasher films. While the film had a great, interesting and promising premise, some of the execution and writing wasn’t quite there. But lets start with the positives. First there’s the iconic Dee Wallace playing a fictional version of herself. She is easily the highlight of the film, and she’s joined by a huge assortment of faces that will be familiar to fans of the Friday the 13th franchise, including Judie Aronson (“Samantha”, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter), C.J. Graham (“Jason”, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives), Tracie Savage (“Debbie”, Friday the 13th Part III), Jennifer Banko (“Tina”, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood), Kane Hodder (“Jason” Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood–Jason X), and Ron Sloan (“Junior”, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning). Many of these guest stars get quickly killed off, but the kills are where the film really shines. They feel very much like a homage to and capture the spirit of classic slasher films, in all their brutal, bloody goodness.

As for the film’s weaknesses, I couldn’t really figure out what tone the filmmakers were going for. The premise leans more towards campy and fun, but things are primarily played completely serious, especially in the initial kills, and film never becomes humorous enough to be a comedy. However, some of the acting gets a bit overly-dramatic and over-the-top. As one of the characters dies, he gives this ridiculous speech where he asks another character to tell his wife and sons that he loves them. And Corey Feldman is easily the worst addition to this film, playing an absurdly over-the-top, perverted film producer with one of the woist New York accents I have ever heard. The writing also isn’t the greatest, with some of the characters’ fates left in limbo without proper resolution—at one point a character may seem dead, but in the next scene a different character will say they were only kidnapped, and it gets a bit confusing as to what really happened. Much of the first act of the film feels more like a loosely strung together montage of guest star kill scenes, while the second half of the film follows more of a narrative, centering on Dee and Kelsie as they are stalked by the killer. However, in very mellow-dramatic form, no one seems to believe Dee, not ever her own husband, who thinks she’s going crazy. He’s less concerned about a murderer on the loose, and more worried that if she keeps acting like this, their son won’t let them see their grandchildren anymore. But Dee is convinced that the killer is stalking and threatening her, and that her family is in danger, and is determined to prove it. Meanwhile, Kelsie is also having nightmares and receiving threats, and wants to figure out who the killer is in order to stop him. Here’s another point where the writing gets a little weak, with Kelsie making a completely out of character turn not trusting/believing Dee, even though she’s been her surrogate grandmother for the past 13 years, only to reverse her position less than 10 minutes later. This general lacking in the finer details is prevalent throughout the film. For example, each time a new character appears, there is text on the screen informing the viewer of what character they played in which movie, but sometimes this says “Friday the 13th” and other times just “Friday 13th”, and sometimes roman numerals are added to the title even if the official title doesn’t have them. These are small but simple things that kind of reflect on the film as a whole.

That said, I think die-hard fans of the Friday the 13th franchise will still have fun seeing so many familiar faces together in a new slasher film, playing heightened versions of themselves. And Dee Wallace is always a joy to watch.

13 Fanboy arrives only on DVD from Mill Creek Entertainment. As some who generally only watches HD and 4K things these days, the SD picture of the DVD release was noticeably lacking the sharpness and detail of a Blu-ray release. Some of the scenes take place at night, and the black levels looked more grey, especially during the flashing lightning storm of the final showdown. The audio track is very aggressive, and I found myself regularly having to adjust the volume. This was especially noticeable in a scene where Kelsie is listening to music on her headphones, and it starts blasting as soon as she puts the headphones on, and then goes back to a normal level once she removes them. The sound effects of the kills were generally well done, but at the same time, there were also a couple scenes which were obviously looped as the dialogue didn’t really match the mouth movement.

The DVD disc comes packed in a standard DVD keepcase without a slipcover. The main menu just offers a subtitle on/off option, and there is no bonus material or digital copy included.

What’s Included:

Film: (1:41:19)

• 480i / Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1
• Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Digital
• Subtitles: English SDH

Extras:

There is no bonus material included on this release.

Final Thoughts:

While 13 Fanboy has a great and promising premise, the overall writing and execution didn’t quite live up to it. However, the film features some really well-done kills, and an excellent assortment of guest stars. This will surely please any big Friday the 13th franchise fanboy, even if the story is a bit all over the place. I think classic horror fans will still have a lot of fun with this movie, but others may find it a bit lacking.