Friday the 13th Part 2.

And so we continue our adventure through the Friday the 13th franchise.

We have a new director at the helm, Steve Miner who would direct both this movie and the next one and would eventually go on to direct one episode of The Gates, a show I really enjoyed so of course it got cancelled, amongst many other things.

It wasn't quite the box office smash that the original was but it was still a hit. What it was however, was even more panned by critics. Mainly for just how generic and clichéd this film was apparently. The critics claimed that Friday the 13th just wasn't doing anything new any more. I guess that doesn't matter to me though, I love the slasher genre, clichés and all. So what did I think? Well let's dig in!

Part 2 is in many senses as much as a reboot of the original film as it is a sequel. Crazy Ralph and Alice, the only two characters from the original that turn up in this film, both turn up to do largely nothing and then simply die and then from there...things get a little messy. If you basically take the first film, move the location to another point around the lake and change it from 'counselors preparing a summer camp' to 'counselors training to be...better counselors', that is basically where the changes end. We're still at Crystal Lake, we still have basically the same characters - but hey one is in a wheelchair! Doing largely the same things and a killer is still picking them off - there is even a storm again. About the only difference is this movie is much more interested in pairing off all our protagonists before they get killed off and that the ending is confusing and open. This barely counts as a separate movie, let alone a sequel...at least in practice.

You see, it's hard for me to express my point without clips but this a text review, not a video review so I'll try my best to explain. While in practice Part 2 is just one long retread of the first movie, in narrative however it has a lot of world building and development for the Friday the 13th universe. Most of this is told through dialogue and not really shown, which is where the messy comes in, because take away those lines of dialogue you basically have the same movie again, add them back in and you have a proper sequel, so it's weird. We learn that Jason's body was never recovered, so no one can truly say if he really drowned or not leading to urban legends of him living in the woods as some kind of monster, eventually seeing his mother beheaded and going on a warpath for vengeance - the characters discuss the reality of all this, if Jason was real what would he be like? And this goes by slasher real, rather than reality real, it is still an interesting bit of depth added, this sense of reality gives the film bigger impact.

This is also the introduction of Jason Voorhees, who knew this dungarees wearing man with a sack on his head would go on to become a horror icon...we'll have to wait for the next film for him to get his hockey mask. And honestly, he just kind of sucks. I mean he's scary at first but as soon as you see him crippled by the power of a jumper, it's hard to really appreciate him as any kind of threat. Take Michael Myers for a second (I know, I know) there was something so...inhuman about him, he seemed unstoppable even if I knew he wasn't - that is what made him so scary, Myers was a force of nature. With Voorhees however, I never thought he was anything more than a guy with a sack on his head - despite the body count he racks up throughout the film and seemingly with relative ease, his fight with the final girl largely involves him falling over a lot and that is about it and it. It just really leaves you wondering how he stealthily eliminated everyone else with such efficiency throughout the rest of the movie if he sucks this bad. To be fair, a creepy ass old lady was just as stupid but the implications were a little more frightening - imagine if she went on to become the horror icon! This does raise a heap of confusing ass questions, though. I mean what, are we supposed to take the whole kid coming out of the water thing at the end of the first one as not a dream but reality now? Because if that is the case, what, did he stay a kid for like thirty years, then fully grow in five years? I don't understand. And do I want to know where and how he got his mothers severed head and clothes?

Our new final girl is Ginny...I knew so little about her by the end of the movie...I can't really say anything about her. Once again though we learn enough to know she isn't your classic final girl. She is once again not 'virginal', she joins in with everyone else (although admittedly to a limited degree) and she is once again pretty feminine. At least the slasher is a man this time, so we can talk about the whole gender crisis thing or whatever - well you can, I do enough of that crap in my lectures and essays.

Part 2 is much more about the atmosphere, than it is about the gory kills - which is probably for the best since the kills don't look much better than they did in the first movie, despite having a year on that film and twice the budget. However I do recognise that this will probably put off more hardcore slasher fans, I mean Part 2 certainly has slasher elements but it isn't as much as a by the numbers slasher like the original was.

Part 2 has drastically improved pacing, this time there is really a sense at all times that a killer is stalking our protagonists which actually gives that sense of rising dread the first film lacked. Even when nothing is happening, here you know the killer is out there, waiting for strays to break away from the pack so they can pick them off. It doesn't feel nearly as random this time, it feels planned out. And yes, the characters in the film may catch up to the audience later than Alice did in the first film but here so many characters are still alive at this point, it doesn't feel like they catch up right at the last minute.

There may be less gore this time but it's a slasher sequel, so there has to be more of more. More characters, more partying, more plot, more sex, more boobs and general nudity. More, more, more - the only requirement of a slasher sequel. And if there is one thing I like more than bloody violence, it's boobs.

The larger cast of characters sadly isn't in the films favour however, it tries to define and develop some of them but this is largely just window dressing, a way to pad out the film and waste our time. Very few of the characters do anything of value or have anything of depth about them and this wouldn't be a problem but the film doesn't seem to want to admit or accept that 99% of the cast are just there to die. There is a surprising amount of character development in this movie but it all amounts to be completely pointless because the cast is much too big to give both them and the slasher a chance to do something. Maybe if the film was longer this'd give the deaths more impact because I'd know the people dying but instead I just start to learn about them and then they die and that doesn't work, it just wastes time. Slashers always work better with a smaller cast, who are able to each have a direct impact on the story and still be there to be ultimately killed off.

So do I recommend it? Part 2 is a frustrating film, because it both fixes all the problems I had with the first film but then brings a load of new ones of its own. Honestly if they had made the cast smaller and not tried to overcomplicate everything this could have been a great movie, as it stands it's certainly better than the original but is still only really a 'good movie'. I mean there is nothing wrong with that but I don't know...I guess I just expected more from this 'classic' franchise, it isn't impressing me yet, not really.

Think About It!

-Locke