While “13 Fanboy” is entertaining, it often struggles to hit the mark Cinemax

Deborah Voorhees’ meta-magnum opus on Friday the 13th^Th13 Fanboy manages to meet the expectations of many fans, but still presents the viewer with an admittedly bumpy ride.

The film begins 13 years ago when Deborah Voorhees, playing herself, meets an untimely end due to a deranged Friday the 13th^Th Mega fan. Her granddaughter survives, but must relive the grisly events of that night over and over again when the murderer seemingly reappears to finish his job and kill the surviving actors from the famous horror series. As the number of bloody murders continues to mount, Kelsey Voorhees and adoptive mother Dee Wallace (also playing herself) struggle to evade the killer’s attempts while preventing their lives and families from falling apart.

On the surface, 13 Fanboy should not only satisfy Friday fans and gorehounds alike, but it will also do so with a lot of unbridled fun and reunite a large portion of Friday’s alumni in a familiar horror film setting. Unfortunately, 13 takes itself so seriously that there’s virtually no fun in sight here. THAT is ultimately “13’s” biggest misstep, and that says a lot for a film that’s so tonally uneven that it often forgets exactly what it wants to be.

There are some strange possibilities here. While the film is obviously a love letter to F13, it bounces back and forth between the main cast, sometimes focusing on Voorhees’ granddaughter (Hayley Greenbauer) and Dee Wallace, both of whom are new to the franchise and only appear in this pseudo-entry. The film does its best to present its actors in more dramatic roles, but long takes and brightly lit kill scenes give the film the quality of a liftetime film production that constantly works against it. There’s so much potential here to deliver a meta-inspired horror film that appeals to fans while also delivering some classic who-dunnit that the decision to focus on the paint-by-numbers kill scenes instead just feels tedious and tedious for the most part. That’s a shame, because the recipe for a good soup can be found here, but too many ingredients could mean you have trouble finding any of the notes that really resonate.

While “13 Fanboy” works a little too hard to showcase its actors, there are a few performances here that are surprisingly unexpected. When given the opportunity, Greenbauer anchors the film in its finest moments, and Jodi Aronson delivers one of the film’s more solid performances. Vincente DiSante is also serviceable and CJ Graham proves he’s just as adept when he takes the mask off.

13 Fanboy, for all its fan service, should be a lot easier to like than it is, and for fans it’s far less than they deserve.