That was an excellent one.

Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Well, I have to hand it to them, this one captured my attention a lot more than the original film. While it's quite obvious they didn't necessarily plan it as much, the use of abstract craziness makes it a lot more watchable. I noticed in one scene, a woman's throat is cut with the back of the machete. That was funny, seeing as that side of a machete isn't sharp. There was also a weird scene where a woman is hiding from Jason under a bed, and begins urinating for..seemingly no reason other than the fact she sees a rat under the bed with her and may be frightened by it. I'm not a big fan of rats either, but to begin peeing on myself out of the blue seems a bit much. Overall though it was definitely a watchable and enjoyable movie. It makes me feel a bit better about watching the rest of these in the future.

Set 5 years after the (superior) original Jason makes his debut as Crystal Lake killer, taking over from his dead Mum, who's decapitated head sits in a sort of shrine in his woodland shack. Viewers will have to wait until part 3 for him to don his iconic hockey mask. Like the first movie part 2 benefits greatly from Harry Manfredini's soundtrack. The pace of the film & nudity have also been turned up a notch. However, 48 seconds of gore & violence were removed at the request of the MPAA, so sadly the gore is down from the original (Mrs Vorhee's beheading is thankfully repeated in all it's glory). The film does also have a few gaping plot holes - how did Jason survive all this time? How did he track down the Final Girl from the original? However, at the end of the day this is pretty much the perfect stalk-and-slash movie - if only we could get those 48 seconds back!!

Friday the 13th: Part II, for some reason, decides to spend the opening seven minutes recapping the events of the first film via a dream from Alice, the only survivor from the group of campers from the first film. It's bad enough that I had to sit down and watch the bland and boring F13 let alone have it recapped for me. The summary includes Jason popping out of the lake in the end (which is a confusing mistake because of certain events later on). After she awakens in her apartment, she spends the next couple of minutes being scared by phone calls, cats and other stuff before being unceremoniously bumped off. We later come to find that her killer is the kid Jason who drowned in Camp Crystal Lake all those years ago.Now pondering on just how Jason, who we'll find out to be quite a doofus, managed to track down Alice is one thing, but we must first ask ourselves just why the hell is he not a decomposing sludge of flesh at the bottom of a lake? So did he not die all those years ago, and fake his death? If so, why was his mother seeking revenge? Or did he die and then come back to life? But then why was he a kid in the final scene in F13 Part 1 and a grown man in this film? The only explanation is that the jump scare sequence in the first movie was a dream sequence. But that still doesn't explain just why this guy decided to start prancing around killing people. Unless of course it's revenge for his mother's death. But wouldn't the two have met somewhere down the line and Mrs. Voorhees would see that her son wasn't dead? Then why was she seeking revenge in the first place? Unless he was hiding from her too, and he didn't drown all those years ago, instead managing to escape the lake and p*** off into the woods?Argh. I've spent more brainpower trying to decipher the absurdity of F13: 2 than the ambiguity of 2001 or Mulholland Dr combined. The truth is that the people who worked on the first film never intended for Jason to become a villain nor had any thoughts for a sequel. The guys who made this film decided to do just that and ran with the idea, but never actually explained it in any of the sequels, I've been told. At least the Halloween movies had that thorn cult thing and the Freddy Kruger films told us why a normal man was able to go into the dreams of children. Come on Miner, this is just not on.If you can accept Jason's return (and judging by this franchise' box office returns, people did) then F13: 2 still does not make for compelling viewing. You see, everything that I've talked about in the first paragraph happens in the first 10 minutes or so and the movie is 1 hour 26 minutes long. That leave just a little over an hour for the actual story to take place. And it's just the same as the first film – a group of horny teenagers are camping near the lake for whatever reason (these lot are a bunch of trainee councilors or something), dick about for a while and have some dull conversations with each other. Every so often, we're spared another agonizing discussion about who-bloody-cares because anyone who goes for a wee alone is taken out by an 'unknown' stalker. Then, a female is chased for about 15 minutes and apparently kills her stalker and she lives happily ever after, but not before we a gifted with a cheap jump scare which apparently is a dream sequence. Wham. Bam. I feel I've been ripped off, ma'am. That was the setup of both this film and the first one and the world of the internet tells me the sequels are no different. Oh joy.It wouldn't be so bad if there was actually some talent behind or in front of the camera. The actors are a bunch of charisma-free wooden planks and the long, boring and overused POV shots of Jason doin' a bit of the ol' window-peeping feel like they go on forever. They're also accompanied endlessly with that irritating 'Kill kill kill' score played on a loop. The director must've either thought he was expertly building up tension (spoiler alert: he wasn't) or needed to pad out scenes in order to justify a theatrical-worthy runtime. Not to mention the ultra slow-mo in scenes that are supposed to be frantic, and yet kill any possible tension.When F13: 2 isn't boring you to sleep it's ripping off better films, like Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood with two scenes: one where two people are impaled with a spear while they're banging away in bed, and another where a woman decides to get naked and swim in the middle of a bloody creepy-ass lake in the middle of the night in the cold for no bloody reason.There's no style. There's no draw. There's no signature that makes me think "Yes – That is Friday the 13th and that is why I watch these movies." Neither of the films I've seen have had the atmosphere of Halloween, the class of A Bay of Blood, the grittiness of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or the furious nature and inventiveness of A Nightmare on Elm Street. So what's the appeal? A few cheap jump scares and watching teenagers get killed one by one? Sorry, that's not for me.

Friday the 13th part 2 is my actual favorite of the series due to the excellent story that takes place five years after the original story. Jason is revealed to have grown up in the woods around the camp, now wearing a potato sack on his head, to cover his deformed face as he stalks or kills anyone who dares to come around the lake. He was there the night his mother was beheaded and collected it for a shrine he set up in a shack for his victims.The sack used really conveys an inhumane creature that keeps coming at you like an endless loop nightmare and makes sense from a logical point since he prefers the forest and can gather only what is available. It's one of the reasons that I love this sequel and think it adds to the scare factor you expect in a horror film. The pitchfork seemed like an effective weapon that would last and become a trade mark instead of the machete that would rust and be hard to replace. I even own the box figure with all the accessories included and it's a treasure. I like the little campfire scene where the legend of Jason is discussed and leads to a prank that could disastrously go wrong. It is camp Crystal Lake after all.The one problem I had with it is that there are to many characters here, most disappearing half way through the film and most killed in succession not leaving time for much development of who they are. I like to feel emotion for the characters being stalked so I can root for or feel sad for them when they die or get away. One of the things I think future script writers learned from this and use the bigger caste to its advantage in later sequels. Yes, it's a trade mark like the mask.One of the most haunting and memorable scenes of the entire series is where one counselor Jenny finds the shack and pretends to be his dead mother. She places on the sweater while the floating head of Betsy Palmer commands her son to kneel so that he can follow in her footsteps and lose his head. I can't tell you how many times I rewound it and watch this scene with pure shock at the creative engines in place to produce it. It makes it stand out from the other generic run of the mill slashers and burned a permanent image in my head.Just like the first it ends in a dream sequence and leaves the mystery of several characters in desolation. Is muffin still alive? Did Jason really kill Paul or did he run him off and call for help? These questions leave you wondering and wanting more.