One year after the success of Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th comes the first in what would be many, many sequels. While the first movie set the concept of Camp Crystal Lake and the incident that lead to young Jason Voorhees drowning on account of negligent teen counselors, the sequel would kind of be the series proper going forward. Because, given that Pamela Voorhees got her head chopped off in the first movie, and we left off on enough of a cliffhanger in the first movie involving if Jason really was still alive (in a figurative sense I guess), there are still some questions to answer and plenty of horny teens to kill. Time to see how Jason's first time as the main villain pans out. So, what did I think about Friday the 13th part 2? Let's talk about it.
My ultimate opinion is more mixed than really either positive or negative. There are a few things I liked, a few things that bugged me, but my overall feel of the movie is that it does feel like a case of "second verse, same as the first". And even when the first is involved in this story it feels more like "if you skipped the first, we'll just show you most of the movie in the first ten minutes. Alice's encounter with Pamela Voorhees, the Jason attack at the end, all to make you think Alice will be important to the plot but nope, after a cat scare, she's killed off and the story takes place five years after the events of the first movie. I'm mixed on the opening just in how much it just feels like a "previously on" and was a bit disappointed to see Alice offed so quickly. There were things like her paintings of Pamela's head and her nightmares that I wish could have been built upon. How the trauma of the events at Camp Crystal Lake changed her and how she moved forward. So her getting killed off bugged me.
Another issue I had is that the movie felt way too similar to the other, right down the same archetypes for our teen counselors. The sex-crazed couple, the goof, the two main leads you want to see survive the encounter, and a few others. Also a dog and a guy in a wheelchair, who I feel was only made to be in a wheelchair because someone really loved the idea of a corpse in a wheelchair rolling down a flight of stairs. Hell, even the sex crazed couple includes its own discount Kevin Bacon and they die during sex with a sharp object. I liked a lot of the murders in this one, but they also felt lacking compared to last time. Also a really inconsistent feel here. Most of the counselors leave before Jason really gets to work. Even the comic relief, Ted, somehow survives the whole movie. How he just walks out of the movie is surprising. I will say I liked the tease of Muffin the dog dying but actually not dying. It was a whole other dog. That actually caught me off guard more than any of the scares in the film.
Like I said, the plot is the same as the previous one with a few tweaks. The camp in the movie is actually a new camp near Crystal Lake, which is now condemned and referred to as "Camp Blood" given the history. Main characters Ginny and Paul lead a group of newbie counselors before it's time to open the camp for the summer. However, the killings begin again as now it's Jason's turn to go on a killing spree. And he does so, more so as a tribute to his mother Pamela whose head and sweater he has in a ramshackle cabin in the old camp. Farmer Jason is interesting. It's not the iconic version of him, and the one eye potato sack look is a bit silly, even when compared to the hockey mask. but it works for this version of Jason. Also, the pickaxe being his weapon of choice also feels so off, like he's less a drowned person out for revenge on people who don't deserve it, but like some evil coal miner. Definitely a case of the character still needing an overhaul, but for his first outing, it still works.
He comes off as more awkward a murderer here, he fumbles around a lot more than you'd expect and even does some silly things like standing on the chair about to stab Ginny only for the chair to collapse underneath him. Despite still being a threat, Jason feels more easy to defeat. A more human version of what would ultimately becoming a lumbering, seemingly unkillable zombie later down the line. Which leads to the whole scene with Ginny in Pamela's sweater, tricking Jason into a false sense of security. It's goofy to think that Ginny and Pamela look alike, but given Jason is already mentally broken and seems more like he lacks any common sense, it works here. He's less the undead and unstoppable machine of the later films, and that rawness is what I came out liking most about this movie.
It definitely feels like a hornier movie than before and less ashamed of being exploitive. Though interestingly it felt like the movie was under some edict for "we can have a girl full on naked with a barely visible bush skinny dipping but we can't actually show any female victim being murdered" situation. Injured and cut, sure, but not as brutally killed as before. Even Alice, who does get a brutal end feels far more downplayed compared to Mark's machete to the face, Crazy Ralph being garroted by barbed wire and Scott's throat being slit while upside down. All that we get of Terry's death is her screaming to the camera, nothing, then finding her bloodless corpse in the pile around Pamela's head.
It's a very stabby film is the best way to put it. Even down to injuries on set like when Ginny's actress Amy Steel accidentally stabbed Jason actor Steve Daskewitz in the hand with a pickaxe. Also, while watching some other reviews and learning about how the other Jason actor, Warrington Gillette swinging into the big ending scare only for the glass to not break and for him to get hurt. I want to imagine a cartoonish "clonk" noise when it happened. The movie was another solid box office, but not as strongly as the first. Now having to set itself in a market where masked killer movies were becoming the norm. So, it meant plenty more movies in the series, which I do intend to get to eventually.
I will say the movie felt more brisk than the first one. Its run time didn't drag or feel as slow as the first. Even the first half which is more about Jason's stalking than the kill-a-thon second half. The ending feels a bit breakneck for its own good. Ending with Ginny being taken to the hospital with no sign of either Paul or Jason, making the whole scene with him jumping through the window feel lacking in impact than the first jump scare Jason ending from the first movie. We don't even see Muffin for that matter since, again, I can't believe the dog actually lived. If this were written by R.L. Stine that wouldn't have been the case, that's for sure. Was most of this a dream? If so, how did Ginny get back to the cabin and was still injured? Also given this doesn't get followed up on even in the way the Alice stuff does at the beginning of this movie, it really feels like something just got lost in the shuffle at the end. No, seriously, what the hell happened to Ted? How did the comic relief survive this, nor had really any agency to the plot after the bar scene.
In the end, I liked this one less than the first, but was still overall okay with this one. A lot of little decisions I wasn't fond of, and the brand already having a repetitive feel in movie two doesn't help, but the things that do work really work. I mean how many other movies use rat piss to lure the killer? Or was it Ginny's piss? That one befuddled me for sure. And like I said, I kind of like awkward Jason's first focus. Next up is the third movie, the 3D one, which means more sillier stuff to sell the 3D effect. And it gives us Jason's mask for the first time, which is also neat. Hopefully I'll have more to say on that one. But for now, two down in the Friday the 13th saga, plenty more to go.
RATING: **1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment