03/09/10 - Friday the 13th Part 2

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981, 87 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082418/

The follow-up to Friday the 13th, I turn my attention to the second in the series. Now, Jason himself serves as the killer, so I was anxious to see how that lived up to the first film (which seems to actually be regarded as the best).

The film features a new group of kids setting up a camp near Camp Crystal Lake. Naturally, Jason will have no part of this and slowly murders them one by one. Jason is played by two actors: Steve Dash and Warrington Gillette.

This film takes a drastically different approach than the first. We see more of Jason and it seems to be more brutal at times. Sadly, I felt like many times the film focused too much on setting up the kill instead of creating suspense and surprising me with the kill. I liked how in Friday the 13th the film didn't actually show some of the deaths but instead surprised the last survivor with them at the end. This one I'll admit the deaths were a little cooler though and Jason naturally was a more fearsome opponent.

As before, the music selection was pretty good. It added suspense when necessary and there was the similar theme going for Jason when it went to "point of view" camera for him as there was in Friday the 13th. I'm actually surprised I'm liking the music in the series as much as I am.

The flaw I have with Friday the 13th Part 2 is that everyone is just boring. I understand that I'm really not supposed to feel anything for the groups of kids in these type movies, but for the most part I liked the characters. It was just that I didn't feel like much actually happened, even for a short 87 minute movie. It seemed much longer so I feel there were some pacing problems.

One positive I felt for the movie was that it tried to tie things together well. Having Ginny's car not start a lot made it less surprising when it didn't start at the end as she tried to escape from Jason. Also, having her be a psychology major and use "psychology" to try and convince Jason to not kill her at least was an attempt to make the conclusion believable. There were some other similar parts where the movie actually tried to make explanations for some of the usually cheesy moments. I at least liked this.

Overall, I gave this film a 4/10. While the positive above is a big one (to me at least), the whole film was just too boring to save itself from a sub-average score. Jason wasn't that menacing a killer really but at least the finale was better than that of the previous installment. I'll check out the next one if only to see Jason finally don the iconic hockey mask.