An excerpt from my script review for the Friday the 13th sequel Camp Blood by Swift and Shannon which will be available 06/05/26:
2.) Plot Stability
So this is the second installment for Friday the 13th in our What Could Have Been series.
Gotta admit I liked the Friday the 13th origin story written by Aaron Guzikowski better.
(But Paramount execs strike again there!)
From what I remember of that script (which I reviewed in 2017), is that this was a prequel to the original film where we’re treated to seeing Camp Crystal Lake in all its glory, as an actual summer camp with Pamela Voorhees as a young mother and a boyhood Jason who drowns at the hands of the camp counselors.
Now I’m not a dedicated fan of the franchise, but this version was really cool to me, seeing what (possibly) led up to the 1980 original.
But we’re not here to talk about that…
With this sequel we get a few things we’ve never seen before…
(This I’m going off of what other reviews have said, because I’ve not seen all of the films.)
Camp Crystal Lake in the snow…
Now, there is a fan film set in winter at the camp, but officially it hadn’t been done when this script was originally written.
This aspect seemed cool to me…
Jason “marching” along the ice after one of his victims. This is cool because he can’t run, for fear of slipping which would look silly, so the teen’s deadly fate chases him in slow motion.
Another chilling visual (pun intended) is as another victim tries to hide from Jason. He hears the sound of crunching snow and knows death is near.
Slow, crunching step after crunching step…talk about tension…
Those are really awesome things to witness in a theater.
Although there are some decent kills in this initial setting, after everyone’s dispatched we fast forward to a few days before summer camp is meant to start up in a reopened Camp Crystal Lake.
How was this any different from the original?…aside from the infamous “zip line kill”…
It wasn’t really.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of cool kills that slasher fans will be excited about, but this sequel isn’t reinventing the wheel.
One aspect I didn’t care for were the teens discovering the underground tunnels.
Remember, I’ve not seen all the films, so maybe this is explored in the other movies too, but this didn’t work for me.
It was like finding out how a magic trick is performed.
Pamela’s freakish alter was okay, and using her mummified corpse against Jason wasn’t bad, but we don’t need to see a network of underground tunnels that completely ruin the mystique of this famous villain.
Him popping in and out of sight is what makes us uneasy.
We don’t need to see his dwarven roots.
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