Director: Steve Miner
Year: 1982
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Hoping a trip to her old campground will ease her troubled life, a group of friends arrive at Crystal Lake for a weekend of fun only to find the homicidal Jason still lurking around and must try to get away before they're all killed.
Review:
This one managed to be one of the more enjoyable sequels in the series, though there are still some flaws to it. One of the better aspects here is the exceptionally high body count which generates plenty of gory, blood-soaked goodness during it's time with a rather wide assortment of weaponry. This ends up delivering with the bloody goods impaling people on staffs, knifes, and many other sharp objects as to be expected during a film as this, ranging from head crushes to a pitchfork thrust into their throats to a speargun in the eye and a pitchfork in the stomach included in the mix. There's even an all-time favorite in the infamous handstand kill, performed where a character walking around on his hands is bisected from the groin up with a machete in one swipe which is part of the charm with unique and fantastic kills, as all the killings are great to a degree and is pretty chilling.
As well, the film manages to get plenty of fun in its traditional slasher moments as there's a ton of incredibly suspenseful moments in this, from the barnyard massacre of the biker group as the group continually reaches another level to find one of their members killed unexpectedly, to the different stalking tactics against the friends in the house. Those are incredibly fun, with the lakeside ambush, the attack on the post-coital couple upstairs hallway and then taking out the remaining group as the last couple arrives and then parts of the final chase throughout here, which is a highlight effort of grand style here. it's lengthy, gets in numerous close encounters and provides the kind of high-quality stalking, chasing, close-encounters and battling that runs through the house, out into the woods and back into the barn for one of the best parts here, though in the end this segment also highlights part of the film's problems.
The fact that, what should be the biggest sequence is instead merely presented as a tired retread of the other two in the manner of knocking him down then failing to press the advantage in order to hide and do it all over again, which makes this one of the lesser examples of the style. Also problematic is the 3D effects here are just plain ludicrous, with the examples coming across as just stupid as the tactic itself geared toward finding the stupidest possible examples to accomplish the feat as possible, getting yo-yos, popping popcorn, flung wallets, juggled fruit and more flung towards the camera that has no bearing on the plot and they all stick out quite obviously.
The acting here is also a problem. Dana Kimmell is bland as Chris, who's a simply awful final girl here. She doesn't really do much against Jason in their fight, blatantly ignores a vital piece of trivia from her story that could bring others onto her side just to be able to have a tearful reveal at the very end and just seems like a wet-blanket the whole time which makes her quite unappealing. Her friend Vera, played by Catherine Parks, makes for a much more appealing final girl who's a much sweeter, more likable figure here with her attempts to placate Shelley and the more quiet, level-headed parts of the character while around the camp make her a much more deserving final girl choice. That she's even more attractive than Dana is another bit of work here to showcase her being the only real choice for that part of the film being the only good one in the bunch. The rest of this one is taken up with bland, unmemorable cannon-fodder characters.
The last problem here is the film's pacing, which is off and quite drags at places as the beginning is endlessly overlong with the massacred couple who are completely unworthy of being focused upon for way too long, the meeting-the-friends is too short and is over too quickly, while the middle section is bogged down with the irritating ploy of her trying to get her past out only to constantly force herself not to then try again and repeat the process. Once we finally get the flashback, which was an important part of the movie, was handled very weirdly as instead of the usual flashback where the character narrates over the action that is happening on screen, we see a silhouette of her face over the action, completely blurring the scene which reveals itself to make no sense in the grand scheme of things, leaving it utterly tiring quite quickly. These here really lower this one in the series.
Overview: ***/5
An overall fun but highly flawed effort, this one really has the biggest problems in the series up until this point even if there are more than enough to make it watchable. The film is mostly for those who enjoy those kinds of efforts or are a complete franchise fanatic, while those that don't appreciate these slasher efforts won't have been won over by the previous entries and won't be bothered with this one.
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