I’ve seen plenty of fan films in my time. Comic book fan films, Star Wars fan films, and yes even fan films from other movies. Usually they’re made by utterly ambitious fan boys, with a sleek production quality, and yet only really range a running time of 10-45 minutes, with the work done before the bag gets old. “Friday the 13^th: Mother’s Day” is probably one of the most ambitious fan films I’ve ever seen—the jury is still out. Not only does it pay homage to my favorite horror franchise of the genre, but it’s based on a teen novel, and runs for about ninety minutes. Suffice it to say, I was shocked when I took a glimpse at the running time for this movie. Ninety minutes? Were they kidding us? No, they were not. So, being the Jason freak I am, I decided to dive right into it, and hope for the best. “Mother’s Day” is based on the novel by Eric Morse it’s an inadvertent bridge between “Jason Goes to Hell,” and “Jason vs. Freddy,” and a film that’s rather ambitious.

The Jason here is not so much Jason per se, but more of a manifestation through the eating of his heart, as witnessed in “Jason Goes to Hell.” Stevens clearly has a love for the “Friday the 13^th” franchise, because this had all the bells and whistles of a usual film from the series, and Stevens succeeds in creating a hell of a fan film for our consumption. Jason’s mother is pissed that people continue corrupting the grounds of Camp Crystal Lake, and insists, through what sounds like a spell, that Jason rise from the grave and punish those that enter. An inept hunter comes across a little item in the ground, and the carnage starts. As mother’s day and Friday the 13th looms, a bunch of partiers go to Crystal Lake, and experience the manifestation of Jason. Clearly Stevens takes lemons and makes lemonade by almost admitting his inability to copy Jason, and just creates an imaginative spin on the character, deriving from “Jason Goes to Hell.”

I cared about the characters, and the dialogue between them was often entertaining to say the least. The formula is here, and I enjoyed it. There’s a preamble, introduction of characters, all the folks play their parts (jock, slut, geek), the legend of Jason is told, the camp is open, and people begin dying left and right in truly gory manners. Stevens also noticeably mixes the camp of “Jason Lives” with the harrowing suspense of “The New Blood” while noticeably sampling scores from the aforementioned films. As someone who has seen all the films at least a hundred times, it was refreshing to see Stevens getting down and dirty with the classic “Friday the 13^th” lore.

One of the glaring errors and difficulties watching “Mother’s Day” is the often dark sequences that are practically incoherent. I had a difficult time understanding what was happening during the night sequences, because the colors are so dim and murky, that when its night, all you see is a black screen, and nothing else. Beyond that, the uses of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” and “Bad Moon Rising” in the score, while apt, were a bit superfluous. While they’re excellent songs, Stevens doesn’t really need to clobber us over the head with these omens to build suspense and tension, when the director was doing it well enough on his own.

Want to see this? You can, because hey, it’s currently free! At over ninety minutes, Cory Stevens creates an utterly ambitious and exciting fan film celebrating classic “Friday the 13^th,” with good performances, a tight script, and a great end result. Check it out, I implore you.