‘There is someone in this room…’
I have watched a Friday the 13th movie every Friday 13th for as long as I can remember. Part 2 of the infamous franchise is probably the one that I have turned to least however. Lacking the quality of the original, the kitsch value of the other sequels or the proper incarnation of Jason Vorhees, Friday the 13th Part 2 feels like a bit of anomaly. Watching it again made me remember why I rarely bother with it…
Even for a horror sequel the plot is ridiculously skinny. It often feels like they had 30 minutes of story line that they had to stretch out into an hour and a half. Some scenes seem to take an age to reach their conclusion. At one point a bewildered policeman chases Jason through the woods and he must run about 3 miles before there is any kind of conclusion. The entire script could easily fit onto one page so that leaves a lot of gratuitous shots of naked women coupled with grisly murders. Even the latter falls a bit flat with uninspiring and unoriginal death scenes.
The worst part about Part 2 though is Jason himself. It is surprising that Jason Vorhees became such an iconic character when his first proper big screen outing sees him running around the forest with a bag on his head. Rather than the unstoppable force of nature he would later become, he is more of a loveable klutz in this instalment, regularly falling off chairs or tripping over.
All this leaves Friday the 13 Part 2 as, not the worst film in the franchise, but possibly the least enjoyable. Apparently large parts of the film were completely unscripted which explains why most of the dialogue consists of someone shouting another character’s name over and over again. That being said I mostly enjoyed watching Part 2 again and the genuinely exciting ending almost saves it from being a flat out terrible experience. Almost…