Quick pop-culture pop-quiz: What iconic item appears exactly zero times in the original 1980 Friday the 13th? If you guessed “a hockey mask,” give yourself a few more course credits towards your degree in slasherology. Jason Voorhees – the unstoppable killing machine who would subsequently turn goalie protective gear into a homicidal fashion statement – appeared for only a few seconds in the first film, where his crazy mother actually dispatched the collection of nubile counselors at Camp Crystal Lake. Twenty years’ worth of Jason-based sequels later, it’s understandable that a remake of Friday the 13th would follow the Liberty Valance rule: When legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Director Marcus Nispel is much more clearly attuned to that guideline than in his 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Here, Nispel doesn’t have to worry about violating the spirit of a classic, because the original Friday the 13th was utter crap – pure low-budget American cheese with a budget for creative gore. But he does prove that he knows why the franchise endures: At its core, it’s less about terror than comedy.

This year’s model of Friday the 13th – with a screenplay by Freddy vs. Jason’s team, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift – is less a remake than a mash-up of elements from the first three films. A 1980-set credits-sequence prologue quickly dispenses with the Mama Voorhees backstory; an extended prologue finds Jason (Derek Mears) picking off a modern-day quintet of young campers. The bulk of the story follows another group of body-bags-in-waiting six weeks later as they head to the hills for a weekend of sex and drugs, interrupted first by Clay (Jared Padalecki) – searching for his sister, who was one of those recently missing near Camp Crystal Lake – and later by nature’s perfect thinner of the 20-something herd.

With this film and a My Bloody Valentine remake within weeks of one another, it’s clear there’s some kind of weird nostalgia going on for the slasher films era. There’s a simpler dynamic at work, from the boogeyman quality of the masked, pseudo-supernatural murderer, to the implicit moralism: the first ones killed have been either screwing around, getting stoned, or both (and therefore, we presume, pretty much asking for it).

Even more fundamental is the idea that these films exist as excuses to laugh as much as scream. Shannon and Swift provide a lively script – including an out-of-nowhere but still hilarious nod to Blue Velvet – with particularly goofy bits for Aaron Yoo as the second batch’s resident cutup. And the young cast members generally serve the important functions of being attractive, topless and dead – generally in that order.

The smartest decision is the structure that allows not one group of potential victims, but two. Slasher films exist for the rollercoaster release of the murder sequences – a jump in the seat, followed almost immediately by a nervous chuckle – and as a way to confront death and laugh at it. The very look-at-me cinematic theatricality that spoiled Nispel’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre works perfectly here, because this genre needs its scares to be over-the-top and obviously phony. Even if it starts to feel over-long even at 90 minutes, this reboot understands why it’s fine to print the legend for this particular franchise. On a fundamental level, it’s more fun than it is mental.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (3) Directed by Marcus Nispel. Starring Jared Padalecki Amanda Righetti, Derek Mears. R, 98 minutes. At Century Ciemas Del Monte Center, Maya Cinemas, Northridge Cinemas