• Release year: 1981
• Director: Steve Miner.
• Producer: Steve Miner.
• Screenplay by: Ron Kurz.
• Cinematography by: Peter Stein.
• Music by: Harry Manfredini.

Shotgun Commentary: a more boring, irrational version of Friday the 13th (1980).

Review

Friday the 13th Part 2 follows the story right where the previous instalment left it, with Alice (Adrienne King). She’s trying to redo her life after the incidents that transpired in Camp Crystal Lake five years back. Unfortunately, Jason (Warrington Gillette) catches up with her and murders her.

The worst of the worst

After the violent beginning, we are transported to another summer camp. There, the counsellors are getting ready before the children arrive. Sound familiar? You guessed it! It is literally the exact same film again. Only this time without the fun addition of a very young Kevin Bacon. To say that this film is boring would be to undersell the experience. It is so tedious to watch that it’s hard to imagine anyone still had energy to continue with the franchise. Then again, it is impossible to make a sequel worse than this, so it actually provides the perfect opportunity to film literally anything. It will still make for a better sequel than this.

Whoever decided that the exact same story with even less likeable characters and no original ending would work, should definitely leave their space in the industry for someone with actual vision, talent or imagination. Jason grows from the skinny mouldy little thing that attacked Alice in the lake, into a two-metre tall muscly man in the span of five years. An impressive feat considering he’s supposedly been living off of bugs and…air? Not exactly a bulking diet.

Considering the ending of the first film, which already doesn’t make much sense, Friday the 13th could’ve had a great supernatural horror sequel. Instead, the audience was fed a story so bad that it manages to be forgettable despite being exactly the same as the previous movie.

Pure nonsense

The only innovation introduced in the film is the final girl’s psychological trap to kill Jason. By pretending to be his mother, she manages to subdue him. However, her ruse fails when Jason sees the beheaded head of his real mother. Now, interesting as it is to try and manipulate the serial killer, his initial obsession with his mother is hard to entertain. You are meant to believe that he has this fanatical reverence for his mama Psycho-style (1960), yet he stayed in the lake pretending to be death all those years? He is fine making her mother think he is dead?

How do you reconcile both personalities? The answer is, you don’t. Just like his physical glow up, you just have to roll with it and not think about it too much. Instead, you can focus on the fact that the counsellors still run around the forest in their underwear regardless of the weather. Or you can think about how men are somehow even more sexist and predatory. Or about how female characters (regrettably much like the ones in horror today) seem incapable of defending themselves unless they are the final girls, even when a man is helping them they can only stare in horror, helping out is completely out of question.

As a fan of cheap old horror films, this author can confirm that, no matter how you contextualise it, there is no possible light you can shine on Friday the 13th Part 2 in which it will look like a good movie. It’s too bad to enjoy and too boring to hate-watch, leaving you only the option of pretending to forget about its existence every time you fell like doing a Friday the 13th marathon.

Advice to take from this movie:

• Some films are better left unwatched.
• If you have nothing interesting to add to a story, move onto the next project.
• Unsurprisingly, gore and goo can’t save a bad movie.

What’s your take? Have you watched Friday the 13th Part 2? Don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message in my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀