Overall rating: 5/10
So far the Friday the 13th franchise has, by far, the largest body count. This series, more than any other, seems to be about blood and boobs. The characters are interchangeable and they have a lot of sex. This film is fairly stupid and would have probably been boring if not for this project. Like the first film this plays out like a series of death scenes without being particularly scary.
There are some changes between Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th part 2. The biggest difference is that Jason, the son of Mrs. Voorhees the killer in the first movie, has now taken up his mother’s grudge against camp councilors. They did away with the mystery and just embraced Jason as the killer. It is interesting that this early in the series he has yet to don his iconic hockey mask, instead he wears a scarecrow like bag on his head with only one eye-hole. He also only occasionally used a machete, which I always thought of as his signature weapon. Another big change in this film is that, because we know who is the killer, all the deaths are from the third person perspective, whereas most murders in the first film were from the killer’s point of view.
This movie has more blood and gore than its predecessor. You see the violence take place, rather than it happening off-screen and then revealed to the audience. It has good continuity with the previous film. Seven years have supposedly passed and a new camp is being opened, not Camp Crystal Lake but located adjacent, on the same lake. Jason has become an urban legend – a scary story the councilors tell each other around the campfire. The viewers, however, know that he’s back, we’ve already seen him kill the final girl from the first film, Alice. They also bought back the best part of the first film, the old guy who yells, “You’re all doomed,” at the new councilors. (I love that guy!)
There are nine deaths in this film, one less than the first Friday the 13th. There is one black guy in the movie – he’s a councilor. He doesn’t die but he’s also only shown once or twice and doesn’t have any lines. This movie is not as good as the first installment and I honestly don’t think that these films are going to get any better.
Continue on for list of victims and final girl.
Final Girls 