Review #391: Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981)
October 2026 Horror Reviews #19 - Friday the 13th: Part 2 (1981)
Another franchise has been born! Friday the 13th: Part 2 picks up with Annie, the protagonist of the previous film, being murdered by an unseen assailant, apparently as revenge for killing Pamela Voorhees. We then cut over to a new group of prospective camp counselors traveling to the Crystal Lake area, this time to take part in a counselor training program. (Was that a real thing? I digress.) Once everyone has arrived, they're told a tale about Jason, the boy who drowned many years ago, and his mother, who took revenge. But rumors say Jason didn't actually die, and he's still out there- more monster than man- and he's going to kill anyone who goes near his home. (Or he might take a bus to wherever Annie was living, I'm not sure.)
This is a very strange sequel, for a very strange series when you really think about it. We've now established, as early as the second movie, that this series is going to be playing fast and loose with continuity, as evidenced by the fact that Jason- the boy whose entire existence in the first film was that he died many years ago and thus provoked his mother to spend decades taking revenge- never actually died. No, this does not make sense. No, it will never make sense. The fanbase and the various novelizations have tried making sense of this over the years (there's no one "official" story, but at least one account says that Jason didn't actually drown, he just almost drowned, and washed up on the shore somewhere else on Crystal Lake, and then rather than walk back to camp some time in the next year before the camp shut down, or just walk home, or literally anything a child might actually do, he learned to hunt and build a shelter and install plumbing and who knows what else) but there simply is no explanation that reconciles this without creating more problems. (Some fans even insist that Jason DID die, but his mother brought him back as a zombie- using the Necronomicon from Evil Dead, the prop of which can be seen in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday- but this doesn't explain why he's a grown man rather than a child, and also, the same movie that might indicate this also firmly establishes that Jason is actually a body-hopping slug, which literally nobody considers canon.)
So, anyway, this is all to say that the continuity of this series is fundamentally broken. Either don't think about it too hard, or maybe pretend that this is an entirely different series from the previous movie (as the creators of the movie tended to do, with rights issues and such).
Generally speaking I think this is a fun movie, but not as good as the previous one. Some of the characters are well-written (the two main protagonists, Ginny and Paul, are among my favorite horror protagonists of all time), but some of them really aren't. The setting is cool, it's literally summer camp-adjacent, but again we don't get to see much actual summer camp stuff in this one. Jason is interesting as an antagonist I guess, but the previous movie had a "whodunit" element that is only marginally kept in this one (as technically we don't find out for certain that it's Jason, nor do we get a good look at him, until very close to the end) and unfortunately the series is going to do away with that almost entirely after this. The kills are pretty good and clever, the special effects aren't bad, I just don't think this one quite has the same charm as the previous movie. However, this one doesn't kill an actual living animal on-screen, so it definitely has a leg up on the first movie in that regard.
I will say, there's a lot about this movie that really doesn't fit what Jason will eventually become, which is understandable since nobody knew where this series would go, but it's still worth mentioning. Like, it's heavily implied (outside of the ending jump scare scene, which to this day I am unclear whether it's meant to be a dream or not) that Jason kills a dog, which a lot of fans think doesn't fit his style (but I'll probably revisit that concept next review). Also, Jason simply is not very intimidating or scary in this movie, at all. He just looks like a normal dude with a bag over his head (compared to the next movie, where he's massive), and every time he's shown on-screen he tends to stumble and struggle quite a bit. Plus, the opening scene implies that he traveled all the way to wherever Annie lives, so he could kill her. Did he take a bus? Did he set his mother's severed head on the seat next to him? (It's even implied that he called her on the phone, and he takes the tea kettle off the stove, so he clearly knows how civilization works.) Jason as presented in this movie is a very, very strange villain, and kind of boring. I'm glad he becomes more interesting later but right here it's hard not to see him as just... I dunno, an ordinary guy.
I don't really have a ton else to say; this is a perfectly serviceable film, definitely enjoyable, just not at all the best the series has to offer.
Overall Rating: 7/10 Wheelchairs Down the Stairs
Safety In Numbers: Something you may not have noticed: this movie actually has a LOT of counselor characters, way more than the previous movie, but around the halfway point of the film almost all of them go out to a bar and are never seen again for the rest of the movie. It turns out, you can survive a Friday the 13th movie quite easily if you just leave to go drinking!
Next Up: Friday the 13th: Part III (1982)!
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