Friday the 13th: Part II
After enjoying the not entirely terrible original Friday the 13th, I was actually looking forward to seeing the first of 11 sequels, if only to get one step closer to finding out how the darn hockey mask is worked into the series. I was once again let down. No hockey mask. No explanations. No flashback scenes of a young Jason putting up his favorite Wayne Gretsky poster. No hockey mask-related insight whatsoever.
In fact, this movie provided virtually nothing of value at any point. A few examples:
- A few minutes into the movie, we are introduced to a stereotypical 80s-looking guy who has rigged some sort of rudimentary slingshot that he employs with such precision that from 50 feet he is able to strike a stereotypical 80s-looking girl right in butt. Maybe this was standard 1981 behavior.
- Later, this same 80s guy steals the same 80s girl’s clothes from the shore while she is inexplicably skinny dipping in the middle of the night. When she returns to find 80s guy holding her clothes, she conveniently uses her arms to cover her chest but not her naked lower anatomy. Curious. She then chases 80s guy into the woods, and ultimately, to his doom, when he is randomly captured in some kind of rope booby trap, which Jason later uses to easy slit his throat. What?
- Friday the 13th: Part II takes place five years after the original events at Camp Crystal Lake, enough time for extreme weather variations to ravage the nation. Though the aforementioned 80s-looking girl is able to most comfortably swim under the moonlight, just a day earlier she and her 80s-looking peers huddled around a campfire wearing long pants and heavy jackets.
The biggest problem with Friday the 13th Part II is that it already follows its own formulaic formula: we are introduced to a group of sex-crazed counselors heading to summer camp; we are forced to endure obscene levels of blonde-haired men; an anonymous lunatic finds creative ways to kill unsuspecting 80s-looking camp counselors; cars won’t start during chase sequences; Jason is revealed as the lunatic; Jason somehow has supernatural, demonic powers that allow him to be almost entirely invincible except for a little-known susceptibility to the classic kick to the groin area; one random girl survives by running into an attic and finding a random chainsaw that somehow doesn’t require a power supply of any kind to turn on; Jason “dies”, I guess, leaving a trail of dead 80s-looking youths behind, and the lone surviving girl suffers a lifetime of post-traumatic stress. Cue bad music.
Friday the 13th Part II only slightly advances the story of Jason Voorhies, but it was enough to keep me interested in the ending. Once I realized there wasn’t going to be a hockey mask, I had only knowledge that the ending must come to keep me going. I knew from the start that all but one person was going to survive, so there was no point investing in any of the characters. They were all idiots anyway. I spent half the movie writing this Journal entry while people were murdered in the background.
No hockey mask. No story advances. No Kevin Bacon.
Friday the 13th Part II, I award you no points. I’m still watching the next sequel, though. Buh.
February 24, 2009
movies