Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Before there were Saw and Paranormal Activity movies coming out every year, there was the Friday the 13th franchise- cranking out abysmal films on the cheap that were guaranteed to rake in a sizable profit off the bloodlust of 1980s teenagers. This, the first of many sequels, is no different from any other paint-by-numbers slasher flick. It also sets the bar quite low for the installments that followed.

While only 87 minutes long, the first ten minutes of this film are a re-airing of the final ten minutes of the original Friday the 13th. Flashforward two months and the lone survivor of the Camp Crystal Lake murders discovers Mrs. Voorhees’s head in her refrigerator and then bites the dust at the hand of an unseen killer.

Now flashforward again five years into the future and a new batch of idealistic wannabe camp counselors are setting up shop on the banks of Crystal Lake, not too far from where previous horrors occurred. Fueled by curiosity over Mrs. Voorhees’s exploits and local legends that her son, Jason Voorhees, is actually still alive and avenging his mother’s death, some of the young adults start down a slippery slope of bad decisions that dooms everyone at their camp.

Everywhere you look in this film, there are signs that it was made for a quick payday. It may have had twice the budget as the original, but its qualitative return on investment is dismal. The acting is even worse this time around and the gore makeup barely comes off with a passing grade. Also, I must beat a dead horse and complain about the dearth of likeable characters. I am open to having a few immoral disposable teenagers in a film to be the first couple knocked off, but the core characters have to be developed and see growth during a film for audiences to get emotionally attached to them.

Interestingly enough, Jason Voorhees himself is Part 2’s biggest problem. It’s called retroactive continuity, or retcon for short. Audiences are led to believe one thing and then later events erase part or all of what was assumed to be historical fact. It happens a lot in soap operas and lousy sequels (I’m looking at you George Lucas).

In Part 2, Jason is the retcon. In the original Friday the 13th, Jason drowned in the 1950s due to inattentive counselors, which explains why his mother would go to such bloody lengths to keep the camp closed years later. Now we are to believe that he did not die. In fact, he’s been living in a shack in the woods and saw his mother get snuffed out in the first film. Jason appeared as a nightmare at the end of the first film- disfigured and scrawny. Well, now he’s the size of an NFL lineman and all muscle.

If I am to believe this scenario, I have to understand a few things. Why, if he did not drown in 1958, didn’t Jason seek out his mother immediately after surviving his near-death experience? How does he find food to eat in the back woods? Where does he acquire clothing from? Why didn’t he reveal himself to his mother in the first Friday the 13th when she showed up at Camp Crystal Lake? Part 2 never even approaches answering these questions, which are necessary to make the whole thing make even a lick of sense.

One interesting thing about Jason is that he doesn’t waste any time on killing people. Most other horror films let their protagonists linger in whatever immoral shenanigans they partake of before paying the price. Jason’s victims barely get into the act of anything before he clobbers them with whatever is handy. Unfortunately, Part 2 contains a closing scene similar to its predecessor, all but assuring us of another sequel.

RATING: 0.5 out of 5