• Director: Steve Miner
• With: Amy Steel, Adrienne King, John Furey, Betsy Palmer, Kirsten Baker, Stuart Charno, Walt Gorney, Warrington Gillette, Tom McBride, Marta Kober, Bill Randolph, Russell Todd, Lauren-Marie Taylor, Jack Marks, Cliff Cudney, Steve Dash
• Music by: Harry Manfredini
• Studio: Paramount Pictures
• Duration: 1h21
• Rating: 6/10

Review:

This movie starts shortly after the events of the first movie. We see a strange figure approaching a house, where the only survivor of the events at Camp Crystal Lake lives. Alice is having a nightmare.

And we skip a few years. A new camp is installed next to old one. The new counsellors are all arriving one by one. It promises to be a hot summer. Only one that will end in another carnage. Someone is killing the counsellors one by one and is following them. Something has survived!

Spoilers below!

I can see frowns upon the faces of the people that heard there was going to be a sequel to a movie that had the perfect ending. And yes frowned there was, amongst them was Tom Savini, who did the special effects for the first movie. He thought a strange idea to have Jason live after all that happened in the first movie.

This aside, this is the actual first Friday the 13th movie that has Jason Voorhees as the killer and will spawn a lot of sequels. In this movie he still hasn’t his famous hockey mask on and only wields the machete ones, two objects he is most famous for.

Storywise I wasn’t impressed and I felt the movie was rushed. Counsellors arrive, counsellors get killed and a final girl survives! And then there are the unanswered questions left open. Of course, this was the early eighties so maybe lighting wasn’t that important or available but this is a dark dark movie that made it hard to see what happened sometimes.

After the first movie, this felt like a downgrade from what the tried to build. But it had its ups as well, but more for future movies.

By resurrecting Jason a new (by now) famous slasher character is created. The first one was a rip off of Halloween, this one set the tone for a new kind of horror. And it inspired a lot of slasher movies in the future, even had a tv-show paying tribute to this (American Horror Story).

Soon I will watch Part 3 and I’m curious how I will enjoy it. It’s been a while since I watched any of these movies so I feel it’s the first time I do. We’ll see.