In a single word: woof. Detailed and spoilers:
Truly, truly, truly disheartening thing to watch as a lover of the boy that drowned in the lake.
Just super amateurish in terms of cinematography, production design, character acting, sound design, score. Things that are not surprising they are lacking considering this is less of reintroduction to the legendary character and more a glorified commercial.
The effects work is nice and I will admit the mask looks better in live action (though easily still the worst hock in the entire franchise). When we finally get to Jason doing what he does best it propels (heh.) to fine but having the first few kills being simply 'the aftermath' feels like a really cheap cop out.
As for the icon himself, it's just as bad as I had feared. I have no idea how you approach the concept of a Jason Voorhees story and settle for depicting the character as such a small framed, normal individual. Even at his earliest, roughest appearances he has always been a hulking mammoth of a man that is a woodlands bear in human skin. Even when shorter actors have portrayed him, he has always felt menacing and brutish. For most of the short this is a minor thing but at the end they have the gall to lay a full frame wide shot of this version on us and boy is it bad, bad, bad. This looks like a character playing a prank where he dresses up Jason to scare his friends before getting murdered by the real deal two scenes later. No disrespect to the actor as he does a decent job portraying Jason but he just does not have the Voorhees frame and the directing does him no favors. Even for someone who is 6'4, he does not even look that tall!
As for the plot itself, it's quite literally a nothing burger with such a weirdly forced twist ending. Nothing says great franchise reintroduction like sharing the major narrative beat with a random new side character who may or may not also be whatever Jason is. An interesting idea for a full length feature film? Yeah, sure. Where you decide to take this new era of the character in the first chance you get to play with him? Not the wisest choice.
I tried to go in with good intentions, I truly did but the people large and in charge of caring for one of my most beloved characters of all time continue to leave a rotten apple taste in my mouth.
Friday 09, for its surprisingly few faults, is such a great, modernized take on Jason and the one thing it succeeds with glorious brutality is showcasing the man himself. Even recent fan films have treated Jason with such great reverence and aptitude while doing it in their own unique styles.
But now the ones who actually own the character haven't shown so far they can get it right and that's so distressing.