a review of 十三号星期五2

#13: Friday the 13th Part II (Amazon Prime) Seemed appropriate for today. This is a franchise that had kind of petered out into a joke by the time I was old enough to show an interest in horror movies, but I thought it might be fun now to see what the fuss was about. I watched the first one last year during Shocktober, and now I'm watching the rest, one at a time, every Friday the 13th. This one REALLY felt like a thin retread of the first one, and I don't even remember all that much in terms of specifics from the first one. The rather lengthy flashback/dream recapping the ending of Part 1 was somewhat surprising, but it makes sense because the filmmakers couldn't assume that the audience had already watched the first one, since home video hadn't hit that saturation point yet. The mythology around Jason Voorhees doesn't really make any sense. Did he actually drown? Because it wouldn't have made sense for his mom to avenge him in Part 1 if he hadn't. If he cared enough about his mother to bother collecting her clothes and severed head, why didn't he ever go see her when she was alive, to let her know that he wasn't dead? HE NEVER CALLS, HE NEVER WRITES. Biggest regret of this movie: When they sent the skinny prankster dork counselor (the one with the caveman mask and SURPRISINGLY SHARP fake spear) out to town with the others, and he ends up apparently getting rewarded with the attentions of the lady bartender, completely out of harm's way. Make no mistake, when he pulled the tow-truck prank on the other two kids at the beginning, I immediately put him on my running "who will die" list, and the movie DID NOT deliver. I'm hoping for better results when the next Friday the 13th (on the calendar) comes around in Shocktober!