Willy's Wonderland (2021)

In my review of Five Nights at Freddy's, I mentioned that "mascot horror" almost always stays within the realm of independent video games. That's where the majority of its popularity stems from, after all. But it's occasionally branched out into movies too. For example, The Banana Splits Movie found a small fanbase thanks to the sheer absurdity of a Hanna-Barbara kids' show from the 1960s being adapted into a modern slasher movie, while also predating that recent and unfortunate trend of beloved children's characters from the past being reimagined as modern horror villains. There's also the movie I wanted to talk about right now, Willy's Wonderland.

Though the creative team behind it may or may not actually admit it, it's hard to deny that Willy's Wonderland began as an obvious ripoff of Five Nights at Freddy's. A cursory glance at their most basic concepts makes the similarities painfully obvious; Willy's Wonderland is roughly the same idea without a decade worth of lore. But unlike the the poorly made, microbudget ripoffs and cash-grabs that you expect when something that fits into the "mockbuster" label, Willy's Wonderland is one that is an absolute blast from beginning to end.

It does more than badly imitate a more well-known property's ideas, it does more than take the basic "someone is trapped in a haunted Chuck E. Cheese knockoff" idea and make something with no heart or soul. Willy's Wonderland completely embraces the inherent B-movie insanity of the whole thing to create something I found to be utterly captivating, and I cannot say enough good things about it.

The movie focuses on a silent, anonymous drifter (Nicolas Cage) who finds himself stranded on the outskirts of a small town in the middle of nowhere after a spike strip left in the road takes out all four of his car's tires. The super-sketchy local mechanic only takes cash and there are no working ATMs for miles, so a deal is struck: a sleazy local businessman will cover the repair bills if the drifter spends the night doing janitorial duty at an abandoned children's entertainment center called "Willy's Wonderland."

Sounds simple enough, right? That's where you're wrong. Just when Willy's Wonderland's new janitor begins what sounds like a mundane new job for just a night, he discovers the restaurant's eight withered animatronic mascots are alive, possessed by the spirits of a satanic cult and determined to kill anyone who walks inside. But the janitor won't let that, nor the dispensable group of teenagers that break in at some point during the movie, stand in his way as he cleans up the place as he'd been hired to do.

I first saw Willy's Wonderland not long after it was released back in 2021 and immediately fell in love. Not one single frame of the movie's entire 89-minute runtime is meant to be taken seriously. It is a batshit insane combination of every silly cheap slasher movie trope and cliché played fast and loose. I honestly don't know if I can convey just how utterly bonkers Willy's Wonderland is.

Director Kevin Lewis and writer G.O. Parsons treat the movie as if it were something made by Sam Raimi if he got his start now instead of 1981. There's a paltry budget and a cast and script that might not be all that great, but there's also an energy there that can and will keep people engaged with what's on the screen. There are parts that are sluggish, but I found myself willing to overlook those moments because the rest of the movie made up for it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to spend the rest of this review gushing about Nicolas Cage and his performance as the silent badass credited solely as "the janitor." He is the biggest reason why this movie is so much fun. You absolutely will not give a shit about any other actor or character in this movie. I said before that the characters are disposable, and that is 100% true. They're solely there to be numbers for an episode of Dead Meat's Kill Count videos on YouTube, they're caricatures of characters you'd see in some cheap slasher movie with the actors giving performances that match. All that's asked of them is to deliver stilted dialogue and do stupid things that you've seen in a hundred other horror movies. And let's face it, you're not gonna remember or even care about the obviously evil locals that are in on the whole thing or the idiot teenagers that have shown up to burn the place down, but split up to have sex and smoke weed despite knowing the place is a death trap. You're here for Nicolas Cage.

The janitor almost doesn't belong here, with Cage himself saying in an interview on the Blu-ray's special features that it was a "Pale Rider meets Killer Klowns from Outer Space" situation. That's a fun way to describe it, because it feels like the janitor escaped from an action movie or a Western and somehow ended up in a cheesy slasher movie. It's like if someone dropped the Doom Slayer into one of those post-Scream horror flicks from around the turn of the millennium, only if the Doom Slayer were a little bit more kooky.

Much like the Doom Slayer (and "Doomguy" before him), the janitor doesn't speak one word of dialogue throughout the entirety of the movie. We only ever hear Cage's voice through the occasional grunt while he fights the merry band of monsters. A quiet hero is nothing new, his silence would make him just as menacing as the villains if this were any other movie. But this isn't any other movie. It loops around and becomes hilarious because he never responds to any character beyond a simple nod, if he even gives them that.

Dialogue, much like a backstory or even a name, would just get in his way. His sole focus is doing his job as a janitor. When one of the teenagers tries talking him into leaving, giving the janitor (and the audience) the backstory of the place, he seems like he's outright ignoring her. He doesn't respond, he doesn't look at her, he doesn't even acknowledge that she's speaking. The janitor just goes on about his business.

It's as if he's taking the janitor job so seriously that even fighting the monsters is as much a part of his duties as mopping the floors and washing the windows, and everyone else there is slowing him down. He cleans up the messes left by every fight and throws what's left of the animatronics out with the trash, makes sure his uniform is tidy, and occasionally stops by the break room to have a drink of soda and play a round of pinball. And he takes his regularly scheduled breaks seriously, going as far as to drop what he's doing and take them as a fight is about to begin, returning once his time is up so the fight can commence.

In the that interview on the Blu-ray I mentioned earlier, Cage said that he drew inspiration from Harpo Marx and Buster Keaton, along with Charles Bronson's performance in Once Upon a Time in the West, to prepare for Willy's Wonderland, and I absolutely believe him. He plays it as both a comedic and a serious role at the exact same time. Cage cleaning an abandoned building and beating monsters to death while intermittently playing pinball and chugging soda just feels right. You're probably not gonna find any memes here like you would with Vampire's Kiss or the remake of The Wicker Man, but this fits in perfectly with his more recent roles in movies like Mandy and Color Out of Space.

I've long forgotten specifically who I heard it from, but I once heard an online film critic say, "A movie doesn't have to be good to be awesome." And that's a perfect way to sum up Willy's Wonderland. It is not a perfect movie by any means, but it damn sure is a fun one. I've watched it more than once and it's still one of the most entertaining B-movies I've seen in a very long time. This movie goes all in in the silliness, which is one of the big reasons I prefer it over the Five Nights at Freddy's movie. I don't need Blumhouse playing this concept seriously while trying to shoehorn in a bunch of fanservice from video games I'll never play, I just need Nicolas Cage fighting monsters. That suits me just fine.

Final Rating: ****

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is often heralded as a classic part of the horror genre. The movies that followed it, on the other hand, have been all over the place in terms of quality. Between the sequels, the prequels, the 2003 remake, and the 3D reboot, the saga of Leatherface and his family has been nothing short of weird.

And things just got a bit weirder with the release of a new entry in the franchise having just landed on Netflix. Another "re-quel," as the fifth Scream movie would call it, this new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie is a direct sequel to Hooper's movie from 1974. And I won't lie to you: you're better off skipping it altogether.

Welcome to Harlow, a ghost town in Texas that has caught the eye of young entrepreneur Dante Spivey (Jacob Latimore). He and his colleague Melody (Sarah Yarkin), along with Dante's girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson) and Melody's sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), have traveled to Harlow with plans to auction off the town's abandoned buildings and turn it into a hip, trendy, gentrified neighborhood. But things don't always go to plan, do they?

Dante and Melody discover an elderly woman in the town's orphanage, and she swears she's the rightful owner of the building. The subsequent argument causes the woman to have a heart attack and die, something that doesn't sit well with the orphanage's other resident: the masked murderer Leatherface (Mark Burnham). He goes back to doing what he does best, drawing the attention of Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) in the process. Sally was the sole survivor of Leatherface's killing spree in 1974, and she's spent the last fifty years dedicated to finding and killing him. But as the original movie asked, who will survive and what will be left of them?

This is not a good movie. There's no beating around the bush. It's a dull, plodding effort that has a lot of gore but not much else going for it. It isn't scary, the characters are unbelievably bland, and is pretty much borrowing ideas wholesale from the 2018 Halloween, but didn't even do anything cool with the idea.

Director David Blue Garcia doesn't really do much to make the movie feel special. There's precious little that stands out or brings anything to the franchise. It's just a generic, paint-by-numbers slasher movie that lucked into having Leatherface as its main villain. There are no real scares, no suspense, nothing to make it worth watching beyond its name. Garcia does give us a couple of slick moments, but they're so few and far between that one would almost swear they were imagining them.

The movie also suffers from a very, very, very weak script. Credited to Chris Thomas Devlin, from a story by  Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, the script doesn't really tell any story worth following. Nobody is going into a movie titled "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" expecting Hemmingway-level writing, but it could've been so much better. The characters are all either boring, unlikable, or infuriatingly stupid, to the point that you don't want to root for anyone to survive. But that's not the worst of it.

For starters, one character is stated to have survived a school shooting. Was this something that got added to make the movie feel somewhat topical? Because using something seriously tragic like that as the backstory for a character in a crappy Netflix slasher movie just screams "poor taste."

And I can't mention stupid things in this movie without mentioning the bus scene. I've seen this scene brought up in numerous discussions about the movie, and I'm not surprised. It's probably the movie's most impressive set piece. But my problem is what happens just as the scene begins. Leatherface climbs aboard a party bus full of hipsters live-streaming the whole thing on social media, and this lumbering brute covered in blood, carrying a chainsaw, and wearing someone else's face as a mask is told by someone, "Try anything and you're canceled, bro." Holy crap. I think we actually found something that can rival "do your thing, cuz" from Texas Chainsaw 3D for one of the goofiest things I've ever seen in a horror movie. I can forgive some of the things people would call "woke," like characters wanting to remove a Confederate flag from one building. But this "cancel culture" joke just came off as the stupidest thing in a movie full of stupid things.

I also thought the idea of bringing Sally Hardesty back could've been handled a lot better. It's already bad enough that they're ripping off Halloween, but the character is only in the movie for roughly ten minutes. Her scenes weren't nearly as interesting as Laurie Strode's in Halloween, lacking a lot of the emotional weight her scenes probably should've had. You actually care about Laurie because she actually feels like she has a personality in all her appearances, as opposed to Sally. When the late Marilyn Burns played her in 1974, all she had to do was run and scream, that's it. This time around, the Sally played by Olwen Fouéré doesn't get to do much beyond hate Leatherface. And honestly, the whole thing was done way better earlier in the franchise, all the way back in the second movie when Dennis Hopper played a crazed Texas Ranger seeking revenge for members of his family that had been killed by Leatherface's clan.

But maybe the cast could overcome the rest of the movie's faults? No, no, a whole lot of nope. There isn't a single solitary performance among the cast that rises above mediocre. I did think Mark Burnham had an intimidating presence as Leatherface, and I'd have liked to see more of what Olwen Fouéré could have done as Sally had she been given more than ten minutes of screen time. But everybody else is just disposable cannon fodder and it seems like the cast knew it. Was there nobody here that could've done a little bit more with what they were given? I know it's a straight-to-Netflix slasher movie, but that isn't too much to ask, is it?

I won't lie, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies have never really been up my alley. I do like some of them, but they've always been overshadowed in my mind by the ones I didn't like. And this was one of the ones I didn't. Outside of some impressive gore effects, everything about it felt like generic retreads of things that had been done better in other movies. It gives off the impression that someone at Legendary Pictures said, "we've got the rights, we've gotta do something with it or we've spent all that money for nothing," before just dumping it on Netflix. It's a short watch, only 74 minutes before the credits roll. But what an unimpressive 74 minutes that is. After the last few movies, maybe the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise should just be left alone for a while.

Final Rating: **

Halloween (2018)

I don't know if there's a whole lot of room for debate when I say that the original Halloween is an absolute classic. Say whatever you want about the sequels and remakes, but there's no denying that John Carpenter's original movie from 1978 was a landmark moment in the horror genre. It helped birth the rise of the subgenre of slasher movies in the 1980s, and has served as a tremendous influence on a lot of horror films and filmmakers ever since its premiere forty years ago.

And as the original celebrates its fortieth anniversary, Universal Studios and Blumhouse have teamed up to give us a sequel to it that's practically a fresh start for the whole franchise. Gone is the cult of Thorn in the middle sequels, gone is the '90s flair stolen from Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gone is the seven-foot-tall beast from a white trash family that Rob Zombie gave us. This new entry in the saga of Michael Myers is a direct follow-up to the very first movie that eschews everything that followed it, and it's one hell of a ride.

Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) has spent the forty years since his brutal killing spree incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, and is soon to be transferred to a maximum-security prison. Or at least, that's the plan. Instead, Michael escapes when the bus transporting him crashes and he makes a beeline for his old stomping grounds of Haddonfield.

But waiting for him is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has lived in unending fear that she might cross paths with Michael again one day. She lives alone in the middle of nowhere in a heavily fortified house. There are bars and tons of locks on all the windows and doors, security cameras and giant floodlights surround her property, and there's a panic room full of guns in her basement.

Laurie's inability to overcome her traumatic past, however, has heavily soured her relationship with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who forbids her own daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) from interacting with her grandmother. But once word gets out that Michael has returned to Haddonfield and has started adding numbers to his body count, Laurie heads back into town herself to protect her family and kill the monster that has haunted her for so long once and for all.

I'll admit that I've never really been a fan of the Halloween franchise. I just never really latched onto them growing up the same way I did the Friday the 13th movies. That said, I went into the theater hoping that at the very least, this new incarnation of Michael Myers would wash the taste of those godawful abominations that Rob Zombie directed out of my mouth. And you know what? This new Halloween kicks ass. It's a genuinely scary movie that I'd honestly call probably the best of all the franchise's sequels. (Or at least my favorite of the sequels with Michael Myers, because I do love me some Halloween III.)

While director David Gordon Green might sound like an odd choice to helm a movie like this due to his past work being a long list of comedies, he proves here than he can make one hell of a horror movie. Green does an amazing job actually building to scary moments rather than just trying to startle the audience with cheap jump scares. Take, for example, a scene at a gas station early in the movie. Michael ever so subtly moves in the background, just slightly out of focus. You might not even really notice him at first, depending on what part of the screen you're paying attention to. But then you start noticing just what Michael has been doing. And just as we begin to realize just how much trouble the characters are in, Michael strikes and takes tension to full-blown terror.

Green also doesn't hold back when it comes to showing just how much of a monster Michael is. The character almost seems like a blend of the cold, focused boogeyman from the 1978 original and the brutal animal from the 2007 remake. Roughly halfway through the movie, there is a three-minute sequence that is one unbroken shot of Michael walking down a street surrounded by trick-or-treaters. The camera follows Michael as he sneaks into different houses at random and kills the occupants inside. It's terrifying in its utter senselessness. Michael has absolutely no reason to do this, no greater purpose for it beyond pure sadism and malice. Green making this one unbroken shot gives us no escape; we're following a monster in a white mask as he cuts a bloody swath through a small town for no reason other than because he can, and there is no stopping him.

I also thought the movie benefitted from a strong script, written by Green, Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBride. (Yes, the same Danny McBride from Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and Eastbound & Down.) I thought Halloween H20 was bold to remove the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies from continuity, but Green, Fradley, and McBride go as far as to ignore all the sequels, evidenced when Allyson dismisses the idea of Michael and Laurie being siblings as a bunch of malarkey thought up by a sensationalistic press. Much like H20, it streamlines things for people approaching the franchise for the first time, since you don't have to worry about having missed anything beyond one movie. And even then, you don't need to have seen the original to understand this one. They fill in enough of the gaps that you more than likely won't feel lost if you're new to the Halloween movies.

That said, what I felt made the movie so strong was not only its fresh take on the franchise, but in how Green, Fradley, and McBride depict Laurie Strode. This Laurie is so different from the one we saw in H20. She's not trying to hide from her past at the bottom of a liquor bottle and keep it a secret from the world with a new name. This Laurie has suffered all kinds of trauma, so much so that it has left her an utterly miserable person even decades later. She can't let herself move on because the psychological wounds are too deep to heal. Sure, Laurie was messed up mentally in H20 (so much so that Jamie Lee Curtis's cameo as the character in Resurrection was set in a mental institution) and in Rob Zombie's second movie, but it feels more believable, more real here.

But I'll also say that I didn't think the script was perfect either. And it's for one reason: the Dr. Sartain character. I got the feeling that Green, Fradley, and McBride wanted to put a Dr. Loomis kind of character in the movie but didn't have the heart to recast the role, so they came up with Dr. Sartain instead. Dr. Sartain has none of the gravitas of Dr. Loomis, and a stupid third act twist does the character no favors either.

And then there's the cast, the glorious cast. The supporting actors are fun (I especially liked Jibrail Nantambu in his small role as a smart-aleck kid being babysat by one of Allyson's friends), and Judy Greer is quite good as Laurie's estranged daughter. Greer especially gets to show off once her character is stuck facing her unhappy childhood once Michael starts coming for her family.

James Jude Courtney, meanwhile, is terrifying as Michael Myers. Nick Castle plays Michael in a handful of scenes, reprising the role he played back in 1978, but it's mostly Courtney we see on-screen. Courtney has an aura to him that makes Michael scary to even just look at when he's standing still. I never really got why Michael was always called "The Shape" before, but now I think I do. Courtney's Michael is the shape of evil, the shape of what goes bump in the night. And honestly, this is probably the scariest depiction of Michael I've seen since the original movie.

And I can't talk about the cast without discussing Jamie Lee Curtis. Some people might be seeing this movie just for Michael, but Curtis as Laurie is just as important. Her depiction of Laurie here is of a woman not to be trifled with. She reminds me somewhat of Linda Hamilton's performance in Terminator 2, how she'd transformed from naive young woman to hardened warrior. The difference between them, though, is that Laurie feels much more raw. Her pain, worry, and paranoia are much more palpable, and Curtis plays the role with an intensity that keeps your eyes on her. If Michael Myers is the shape of evil, then Curtis makes Laurie Strode the shape of unprocessed rage caused by trauma and a desire to make sure nobody hurts like she does.

The opening credits of the 2018 version of Halloween are a montage of names next to a rotten, destroyed pumpkin. But as the names flicker by and John Carpenter's iconic theme reaches is crescendo, the worn-out pumpkin rebuilds itself into a vibrant jack-o'-lantern. It seems rather fitting, as if it represented the Halloween franchise as a whole. Michael Myers hasn't had it easy through his last few movies, but this new one is the perfect way to remind us why Michael and the Halloween name are so important to the horror genre. And I can't wait to see where the franchise goes from here.

 Final Rating: ****

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

One of the first rules of making movies in Hollywood is that if it makes money, keep doing it. That's the big reason why there are so many Friday the 13th sequels. Paramount Pictures had honestly intended for the franchise to come to a conclusive end in 1984 with the fourth movie, to the point that it was even named "The Final Chapter." But much like Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III, Paramount thought they were out, but were pulled back in. It turns out that The Final Chapter was such a big fat hit that they felt almost obligated to keep the franchise going. And just eleven months later, it was resurrected with Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. And nearly thirty years after its release, it's still notorious amongst fans of the series. So let's find out why that is, shall we?

It has been five years since Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) killed Jason Voorhees, an incident that has understandably left him with deep psychological scars. He's quite literally seeing visions of Jason everywhere he goes, and is on a ton of different medications to control these hallucinations. Tommy has spent the last half-decade being shuffled around various institutions, finally arriving at the Pinehurst Youth Development Center, a halfway house for troubled teenagers and young adults.

Tommy's first day at Pinehurst is not a peaceful one, as one of its more unstable residents hacks another to pieces with an axe in a fit of rage shortly after Tommy's arrival. Although he is quickly arrested, more brutal murders soon start happening in the area. But who is to blame? Is it that unhinged axe murderer? Could it be Tommy, having finally buckled under all that mental anguish? Could it be Jason, back from the grave? Or is it someone else entirely?

I earlier called A New Beginning one of the most notorious amongst the franchise's fanbase, and that's primarily due to the wildly differing opinions of the movie. There are those who'd argue that it's the worst of the franchise, that it marks the low point for the whole series. But then there's another camp that believes that despite (or because of?) all its flaws, A New Beginning is one of the most amusing and entertaining entries in the saga. And I'll confess that I used to be among those who hated the movie. But as time went by and I gave it more of a chance, I actually grew to like A New Beginning. But all truth be told, it's not a particularly good movie, nor is it even anywhere near being among the best of the franchise. The characters are goofy, the acting is hokey, and the script is stupid. It's also campy like you wouldn't believe, topped the franchise for highest body count, and is the one Friday the 13th flick that feels the most like a sleazy exploitation movie. And that's really not so bad, honestly, because it makes the movie feel a little more unique. When you're five movies deep into a franchise that would eventually spawn seven more chapters, doing something to stand out can't hurt, can it?

The movie was directed by the late Danny Steinmann, a one-time porn director who a year earlier had helmed the low-budget action flick Savage Streets, which starred Linda Blair in one of her few notable post-Exorcist roles. And if the movie feels like a sleazy exploitation film as I stated earlier, it's because that's the kind of movie Steinmann was known for and was good at making. While the franchise hadn't shied away from nudity in the past, Steinmann makes it feel more prevalent and fetishized. And despite some of the gore being trimmed or outright excised thanks to the MPAA (one kill involving a female victim getting a machete to her naughty bits had to be dropped entirely and replaced with something tamer), the movie also boasts the franchise's highest body count to that point at twenty-one kills. Steinmann, with this movie, had made pretty much the most stereotypical slasher movie he could. And that really isn't a bad thing at all.

The movie honestly feels kinda goofy, something that is simultaneously the movie's biggest strength and its biggest weakness. It's full of cheesy dialogue and silly characters, some of whom are actually introduced and killed off within the same scene. And then there's the much-maligned mystery regarding the killer's identity, which is handled in a way that there might as well be a giant neon sign that says "I'M THE KILLER!" flashing over the character's head at all times. To make a long story short, the script by Steinmann, Martin Kitrosser, and David Cohen is (for lack of a better description) a big ol' pile of dumb that contributes to the inability to the movie seriously at all. But this is what makes A New Beginning so charming too, because this lack of seriousness makes the movie more fun.

Even the cast gets in on the action. A lot of the actors are unbelievably over the top, but try their best to be memorable whether they're good or bad, even if they're only in one scene (as evidenced by Anthony Barrile and Corey Parker, who play a pair of greasers that look like they were excommunicated from the T-Birds from Grease and meet a gruesome fate after their car breaks down). The biggest standouts in my eyes, though, were John Shepherd, Miguel A. Núñez, Jr., and Carol Locatell. Shepherd is actually pretty believable in the role, playing Tommy as if he were fighting a war in his own mind. He comes off as shell-shocked, as if he were lost inside himself and in the hockey mask-wearing nightmares that bother him so. It's a damn good performance that I thought was better than the movie deserved.

Núñez and Locatell are, when approaching the movie from a less serious point of view, fantastic as well. Núnez is a lot of fun in his tiny role, showing a lot of the humor and charisma that would make him so likable in The Return of the Living Dead that same year. Locatell is also great as Ethel, Pinehurst's foulmouthed hillbilly neighbor. She steals the show, especially when playing off Ron Sloan, who plays her character's dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks son. Locatell makes the hilariously trashy Ethel one of the franchise's most memorable characters, her scenes serving as some of the movie's best moments.

I've said more than once here that Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is not a particularly good movie, and it isn't. Its reputation as one of the least of the franchise isn't completely undeserved. But one can't help but enjoy the unapologetically campy silliness of the whole thing. It boasts some unique kills and memorable characters, and blends the exploitation flick feeling with the traditional Friday the 13th atmosphere to create a movie that stands out from the rest. Like I said, A New Beginning might not be a good movie, but it's a hell of a lot of fun, and I'll never fault a movie for that.

Final Rating: **½

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

After the success of the original Friday the 13th in 1980, anybody with access to the right equipment started cranking out their own slasher movies. And Paramount Pictures, seeing dollar signs, started ordering one Friday the 13th sequel after another. But by the middle part of the decade, Paramount began having second thoughts. Slasher movies were nearly always met with nearly universal scorn and derision from critics, and though they were largely profitable from a financial standpoint, Paramount wanted to be known for their serious Oscar contenders rather than some lowly slasher flicks. That's why, in 1984, the studio chose to end the Friday the 13th franchise with its fourth entry. The series would end up continuing long past this one, but this so-called "final chapter" was indeed intended to bring the franchise to an end. And if it had indeed concluded, the saga of Jason Voorhees would have ended with a bang.

After the bloody ending of Part III, Jason Voorhees (Ted White) was apparently dead via an axe to the noggin. But you just can't keep a good horror villain down. He awakens in the county morgue, killing a morgue attendant and a nurse before making his way back to Crystal Lake.

And I'm sure Jason will be happy to find that he'll have a whole new crop of victims waiting for him. A group of horny teenagers have rented a lakefront cottage, expecting a few days of fun and debauchery. Their cottage just happens to be next door to the home of the Jarvis family. Twelve-year-old Tommy (Corey Feldman) kinda likes the idea of cute, nubile young women hanging out next door, but his sister Trish (Kimberly Beck) is more drawn to Rob (E. Erich Anderson), a mysterious hiker who claims to be in the woods hunting bears. It's soon revealed, however, that he's really there hunting Jason, who killed his sister in one of the previous movies. He'd better make damn sure he knows what he's in for, because this is Jason's "final chapter," and he's going out in a blaze of glory. (Until the next sequel, that is.)

It took half a decade and a couple of sequels to do it, but Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter represents what I feel is the first truly awesome Friday the 13th movie. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the first three, but The Final Chapter is where the franchise really hit its stride. It's funny that a movie that was supposed to be the last in its franchise ends up being the one that fully perfects the formula for future sequels. But that's exactly what The Final Chapter is. It's regarded by many fans as one of the best (if not the best) in the series, a status that is not undeserved.

The movie was directed by Joseph Zito, who was hired based on the strength of his prior directorial effort, the 1981 slasher flick The Prowler. The Friday the 13th movies ― and slasher movies in general ― have almost always based around the various set pieces that build to each kill. Much of the suspense and the scares often come from the anticipation of when, where, and how the killer might strike. Zito approaches The Final Chapter with his experience from The Prowler and uses that to craft these set pieces well. He builds upon what the first three movies did and creates an atmosphere that makes one feel that Jason could be anywhere at any time, ready to pounce upon an unsuspecting victim. He works in the occasional cheap "boo!" scare, but allowes some scenes to creep up on the viewer. Slasher movies are an odd beast in the realm of horror, but Zito has made one of the best ones.

The movie also benefits from some fantastic gore effects courtesy of Tom Savini, who had earlier worked with Zito on The Prowler. Savini returns to the franchise after his work on the first movie and sends Jason out in a bloody blaze of glory by giving us some of the best cinematic gore on his résumé. The way Jason is defeated alone is worthy the price of admission, but the way his victims are dispatched are all really cool. Granted, I'm sure a lot of the best stuff had to be trimmed or edited out to make sure the movie got an R-rating, but Savini's work here is just more proof why the best slasher movies of the early '80s hired him.

And like with most slasher movies, the script is mostly unimportant. It's just there so the characters have something to do between death scenes. But honestly, the movie's script, credited to Barney Cohen from a story by Bruce Hidemi Sakow, isn't really all that bad. Parts of it seems like it owes a debt to the glut of sex comedies that came out during the early '80s, as far as the tone of the early parts of the movie go. Some of the characters seemed like they escaped from a cheesy knockoff of Porky's. But it actually feels like a natural part of the movie, and the characters are likable and fun.

I actually really liked the subplot with the Rob character too. The idea of a guy roaming around the woods tracking Jason like he were big game is a pretty cool idea (one that the franchise would revisit nearly a decade later with Jason Goes to Hell), and tying it into the other movies by making Rob the brother of a victim from Part 2 is a good touch. The catch is, though, that it feels like he's been hunting Jason for months when the timeline of the sequels are spread out over just a few days. The continuity is a little screwy, but I still thought the concept was a neat enough idea that I'm surprised they waited until the ninth movie to try it again.

Even the cast is pretty good here. None of them were hired to give Oscar-caliber performances considering that nearly everyone is cannon fodder, but the majority of them weren't bad at all. I thought Crispin Glover (yes, George McFly himself) and Lawrence Monoson were funny in their parts as the two dorky goofballs amongst the teens at the cabin, while Judie Aronson and Barbara Howard have a few cute moments as well. Kimberly Beck, while not one of the best or more memorable Friday the 13th heroines, does prove to be a capable "Final Girl" and holds her own when necessary. E. Erich Anderson also does a great job as the mysterious Jason hunter, giving the character a sense of intrigue and a somewhat sympathetic nature as well. His final scene, though, is so goofy that I can't so much as think about it without wanting to laugh.

But the real stars among the cast are Corey Feldman and Ted White. Only twelve years old when the movie was released, Feldman had yet to be propelled into stardom by The Goonies. He shows a lot of the charm and charisma he would bring to future roles, though, and does a lot to make himself stand out from the pack. It's one of those cases where you watch an actor's pre-fame work and say to yourself, "Yeah, he'll be a star one day." White, meanwhile, makes for a damn fine Jason. He approaches the role in a way that makes Jason seem sleeker and meaner, casting an intimidating presence that makes Jason feel more unstoppable than before. The movie's got a lot going for it, but White's portrayal is the icing on the cake.

Thirsty years and eight more sequels later, it's obvious that Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter wasn't the final chapter after all. If it had been the franchise's actual swan song, it would have ended on a high note. With some inventive kills, decent acting, and some good scares, The Final Chapter is not just one of the best in the series, but one of the best the slasher sub-genre of horror has to offer. It's definitely worth the time and effort to check out. But now that the final chapter is out of the way, there's only one place to go from here: a new beginning.

Final Rating: ***½

Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

Hollywood has pretty much beaten the concept of 3D movies into the ground over the last few years. It seems like every big studio blockbuster is either filmed in or converted to 3D whether it suits the movie or not. I mean, did Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby need to be released in 3D? Was James Cameron's Titanic begging for a 3D re-release last year? But if you think this gimmick is something relatively recent, you're quite mistaken. If you take a trip back to the '50s, you'd find a ton of horror and science fiction movies hitting theaters and drive-ins in 3D. Clint Eastwood even made his big-screen debut in a 3D movie, the 1955 "Universal Monster" movie Revenge of the Creature.

The "golden era" of 3D fizzled out as the '50s came to an end. But the gimmick went through a brief revival during the '80s, which included movies like the poorly-received third entries in the Jaws and Amityville Horror franchises. But the one movie from that period that always caught my eye was Friday the 13th Part III. I have never and will never hide my affection for the Friday the 13th movies, and as a fan of the 3D gimmick when it's used effectively, I can totally get behind the idea of my favorite horror movie franchise going into the third dimension. So considering that today is Friday the 13th, let's take a look back at the lone 3D entry into the saga of Jason Voorhees.

Twenty-four hours after the end of Part 2, word of the horrific events that took place is starting to trickle out to the news media. But this is of no concern to Chris (Dana Kimmell) and her friends, who have rented some property overlooking Crystal Lake for a weekend of fun and relaxation. While Chris wants to use the weekend to rekindle her relationship with an old flame named Rick (Paul Kratka), someone else has other plans. Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) is still alive and passing through the area, and when Jason's in town, people are going to die.

Hollywood has really been trying to cram the 3D format down our throats lately, seemingly trying to convince us that it can be a storytelling tool instead of just the silly gimmick it really is. It wasn't always like that, as the brief 3D revival during the '80s didn't even attempt to hide that movies were using it as a cheap way to draw people in. Friday the 13th Part III fully embraces it, throwing things out at the audience and reveling in its own cheesiness. And it's all the more fun for it.

Director Steve Miner returns to for his second consecutive Friday the 13th movie, and his work is only slightly improved over what he did with the second one. The biggest difference is how Miner puts the cinematography to use. There are some really fantastic crane shots and other bits of camerawork that really work in the movie's favor. Granted, a lot of it is done with the intent of playing with the 3D first and foremost, but they're still done with a flair that adds some personality to the movie.

Unfortunately, Miner falls into a lot of the same traps that plagued him during the making of Friday the 13th Part 2. There are more than a few moments where it feels like he's just remaking the first movie, right down to a similar jump scare at the very end. The kills are really the only elements of Part III that feel like they have any originality. Miner does manage to build some suspense and elicit some scares, but there's not a lot that really elevates it from "okay" to "good."

Miner does, however, exploit the 3D effects for all they're worth. I don't know how good it looked during the movie's theatrical release so long ago, but judging by what I have seen, the 3D isn't bad at all. While a lot of modern 3D movies use it to add depth to the picture, Friday the 13th Part III came from a day and age where 3D was only used to shove things into the viewer's face. Anything and everything will come flying at you in this movie. There are simple things like yo-yos and popping popcorn, but it escalates from there. Spears, axes, knives, machetes, pitchforks, some poor victim's eyeball, and even Jason himself will come after you in this movie. It makes the movie look kinda corny if you watch it in standard 2D, but in 3D, it's awesome.

But while Miner's direction is serviceable and the 3D effects work well, everything else is just there. Take, for example, the script credited to Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson. Unless you're going to do some sort of postmodern satire in the vein of Scream or Behind the Mask, the script is probably the least important element of a slasher movie. I totally understand that. But Kitrosser and Watson have written something so dull that I'm surprised nobody tried telling them to punch it up a little. There's only one really likable character, the dialogue is trite, and the attempt to add a little backstory for the movie's "Final Girl" by having her seemingly assaulted by Jason as a kid seems tacked on and frankly, a little goofy. I'm not expecting something amazing out of the script for a slasher movie, but Kitrosser and Watson could have at least come up with something a little better.

And frankly, the movie's cast is pretty bad too. Again, I know I'm not getting any award-worthy performances out of a movie like this, but give me a break here. David Katims and Rachel Howard are particularly awful as a pare of blatant Cheech and Chong wannabes, while Dana Kimmell is just plain boring as the movie's "Final Girl." Maybe it's me, but Kimmell doesn't really elicit any sympathy, to the point that I probably would have rather seen the alternate, deleted ending where Jason chops her head off.

Only two actors out of the ensemble really stood out in my eyes. One was Larry Zerner, who plays his character with a ton of enthusiasm. You can tell that Zerner's having fun just being on the set, and he makes the character worth watching. I really liked Zerner a lot, and it's a bummer his character ended up being a victim.

The other standout actor is the late Richard Brooker as Jason. Brooker's Jason might not be mentioned in the same breath as the ever-popular Kane Hodder, but Brooker is still a force to be reckoned with. He makes Jason a real monster here, one that you know absolutely will not stop until he's butchered everyone in his way. I enjoyed Brooker in the role, and he really should be regarded highly on the list of those who've played Jason.

Unfortunately, I can't really call this movie one of my favorite Friday the 13th movies. It has its moments, but it's mostly just a forgettable entry in that venerable franchise. It's still worth seeing, primarily for the 3D and the origins of Jason's famous hockey mask, but Friday the 13th Part III is one of those movies that you could skip and not feel like you've missed anything. But then even at its worst, how can you go wrong with a Jason movie?

Final Rating: **½

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

As a fan of horror movies since adolescence, I've seen and heard of my fair share of classic genre movies. But few have quite the same reputation as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just its name alone is a conversation starter, and the movie has spent nearly forty years developing a reputation as one of the most visceral, gut-wrenching horror movies of the '70s.

The movie inspired three sequels of varying quality over the years, and was reimagined in 2003 by New Line Cinema and Michael Bay's production company, Platinum Dunes. But after the lukewarm reception to the remake's prequel, the franchise went dormant. Fast forward to this past weekend, and Lionsgate's resurrection of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre name, Texas Chainsaw 3D.

Titled on-screen as simply Texas Chainsaw (which I assume would better suit its 2D screenings), the movie's producers took the brave step of not following in the continuity established by Platinum Dunes's remake or even the continuity of the earlier sequels, but instead created a direct sequel to the original movie from 1974. And as you may surmise from its title, it's in 3D, to boot. Each of the movies in the franchise have run the gamut from good to bad, so I was curious to see where this one fit in. And you know what? It's pretty friggin' terrible.

The movie picks up immediately following the events of the original movie, and Sally Hardesty's escape from the Sawyer clan has made their murderous activities public knowledge. But before the police can move in and arrest them, a vigilante mob arrives and torches their house. The Sawyer family is presumed dead, but a surviving infant is found by one of the vigilantes and is adopted by him and his wife.

Fast forward to 2012, and the baby is a grown woman named Heather (Alexandra Daddario). She's spent her life being blissfully unaware of the fact that she was adopted, but this illusion is shattered when she learns she's been left an inheritance by her biological grandmother. This grandmother, one of the lone remaining members of the Sawyer family, has left her entire estate to Heather. She and her friends take a detour on their road trip to New Orleans to visit the gigantic house that Heather now owns, but they're in for a surprise when they arrive. The basement of the house is coincidentally occupied by Heather's long-lost cousin Leatherface (Dan Yeager), and he's not exactly happy to see strangers on his property.

I guess the moral of the story is to never get your hopes up. I'd gotten my hopes up and Texas Chainsaw 3D showed up and pooped all over those hopes. It's an unabashedly awful movie that gives off the impression that it was only made because somebody got the rights to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre name and decided to make a little money. There's no passion, no spark to this movie. Had it not been for the presence of Leatherface, it would have been easily mistaken for any one of a million random direct-to-video movies that would premiere on Syfy on any random weekend. And all truth be told, those Syfy movies would probably be more entertaining than this.

The movie was directed by John Luessenhop, and if Texas Chainsaw 3D is any indicator, then I'm not really going to rush to see any of Luessenhop's other movies. You would think that a horror movie would want to be suspenseful or scary, but nope, none of that is here. More than a few attempts at jump scares were just taken directly from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so the only way they would be effective at all is if this is the only movie in the franchise you've actually seen. It's not just scares that Luessenhop steals liberally, but he borrows certain camera angles as well in what I'm guessing was his attempt to pay homage to the first movie. But just because Tobe Hooper had Leatherface drop somebody on a meat hook, or had a girl pop out of a freezer, or had a low-angle tracking shot where some girl's butt took up a lot of the frame doesn't mean that your Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie should have those too.

The movie doesn't even really look that appealing, either. I said before that it felt like it would have gone direct-to-video or been produced exclusively for Syfy, and a lot of that is because the movie looks like those kinds of movies. It has this weird veneer to it that makes it look like it doesn't belong anywhere near a movie theater screen. I've read that the movie had a budget of eight million dollars, but it honestly looks like it was half that. Everything has a "blah" look to it, like the production designers just couldn't be bothered to care. And if the people making the movie don't care, I really can't be bothered to care either.

And you know who else doesn't care? The writers. The script is credited to Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan, and Kirsten Elms, and not one of the three contributed anything worthwhile. There are no likable characters whatsoever, thus providing no emotional anchor point for viewers to latch onto. There's not even enough to get me to root for Leatherface to kill everybody. There is absolutely nothing going on to get me to feel anything about the movie other than "is it over yet?"

The whole script is just a mess, full of inconsistencies, wasted opportunities, and overall stupidity. Take, for example, the scene where Leatherface chases Heather into a local carnival. The scene only goes two or three minutes and they barely do anything with it. You're writing a 3D slasher movie with a scene in a carnival and you can't come up with some worthwhile gags? That's as much Lussenberg's fault as it is the writers, but you'd think that they would so something with it.

There's also a subplot where Heather's boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend, and it goes nowhere and contributes nothing to the movie outside of a chance to see Tania Raymond ― the actress who plays the best friend ― in her underwear. The subplot isn't played for any "oh no, will Heather find out?" drama and it isn't even referenced beyond one or two scenes, which just renders the whole thing pointless.

And how about the whole "blood is thicker than water" thing? The final act of the movie sees members of the vigilante mob that killed the Sawyers now trying to kill Heather just because she was born a Sawyer. Never mind the fact that she was a baby when it all happened and didn't even know the Sawyers existed until the beginning of the movie (and didn't know any of the gory details until much later). I guess we're supposed to view them as the bad guys because Heather didn't really do anything wrong, which I understand. But then Heather decides to show Leatherface a little sympathy and starts helping him. Yes, he's a psychotic cannibal that butchered all her friends and spent much of the movie trying to kill her, but they're cousins so all is forgiven? That is stupid.

And the biggest thing of all is that the movie's time frame is all over the place. The movie establishes that the "modern day" stuff takes place in 2012, but considering that the original movie explicitly states it takes place in the summer of 1973, that would put Heather at nearly 40 years old. It wouldn't be a big deal if the character (and the actress herself) wasn't depicted as being in her mid-twenties. Are we supposed to assume that the original movie takes place in the '90s? You can't argue that this movie takes place in the '90s, because they didn't have iPhones back then (plus the movie says outright that it's 2012, to boot). I'm sure Lussenhop considered that, because the year is obscured every time the date of the first movie is mentioned. But the whole thing just feels like they couldn't be bothered to put forth any effort at all.

I can actually say the same thing about the cast too. The ones that are trying just aren't very good at all. R&B singer Trey Songz is particularly bad, as he's so stiff and wooden that it seems like just standing there is beyond his abilities. I was also disappointed by Dan Yeager as Leatherface. He honestly doesn't have much screen presence at all. Yeager didn't feel all that monstrous or intimidating, which is saying something considering he's playing a 6'6" cannibal swinging a chainsaw and wearing somebody's face as a mask. I will say, though that I liked Alexandra Daddario's performance. She was better than this movie deserves, playing her part with enough strength and conviction to make it work. It's just a shame she didn't have better material to work with, though.

Not even the movie's much-promoted 3D effects are really worth talking about either. There are only a few instances where the 3D works well, mainly the bits where Leatherface points his chainsaw right at the camera. But outside of the occasional "push stuff at the audience" moment, nothing is added outside of an extra surcharge onto the ticket. There's so little depth added that you could honestly watch the movie in 2D and barely notice any difference. If a 3D Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie was something that really needed to exist, why not just do a conversion of the original or the remake and re-release it in theaters? I'd have much rather seen one of those instead of this piece of crap.

So yeah, I guess you can tell I thought Texas Chainsaw sucked. It still doesn't top Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation as the worst movie in the series, but at least that one had Matthew McConaughey's hilarious overacting to make it worthwhile. This movie didn't even have that. I'd heard that it was supposed to have been released in October but was ultimately postponed to this month, and considering January's reputation as a dumping ground for Hollywood's less-than-stellar genre movies, I can't say I'm really all that surprised. Believe me, Texas Chainsaw 3D is less than stellar, alright. Long story short, this movie sucks and you'd be wise to avoid it. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to watch one of the other Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies and get this nasty taste out of my mouth.

Final Rating: *½

Halloween II (1981)

I doubt that John Carpenter realized he was crafting something iconic when he made Halloween back in 1978. It was probably one of those cases where the producers hired him to write and direct a horror movie so they could make a little cash, and that was it. But over three decades later, Halloween is viewed as one of horror cinema's true classics. And after its success and the success that the movie's most famous imitator, Friday the 13th, had in 1980, I guess it only made sense for Carpenter and crew to return to Haddonfield in 1981 for a sequel. Halloween II is one of the more popular sequels in the franchise, and for good reason. It's a great flick that I honestly can't recommend enough.

The movie begins as the previous one concludes, with Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) saving the woe-begotten Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) from certain death at the hands of Michael Myers (Dick Warlock). But despite having been shot in the chest six times, Michael gets up and walks away. As Dr. Loomis obsessively searches for Michael with the police, an injured Laurie is taken to the hospital for treatment. Little does she know that Michael has arrived at the hospital as well, murdering anyone and everyone as he searches the building for Laurie.

Although I like to call myself a fan of slasher movies, I never really got into the Halloween franchise. I didn't even know it existed until Halloween H20 came out in 1998. I've seen most of the movies since then, but never really paid much attention to them. This review was my first honest attempt at remedying that and giving the franchise a real shot. And I can tell you that Halloween II didn't let me down in the slightest.

Rather than direct it himself, John Carpenter chose to co-write and produce the movie. Taking the reins in Carpenter's stead was first-time filmmaker Rick Rosenthal. The way he handles things, you'd think that Rosenthal was an old pro or that Carpenter made the movie for him. The movie feels less similar to the original Halloween and more like an early Friday the 13th sequel, but Rosenthal still manages to retain some of the lingering dread that made the first one so frightening. It occasionally seems as if we're watching more of the same, yes, but Rosenthal still makes it work. There's a chase scene roughly an hour into the movie that is so tense and suspenseful that it should be added to the required viewing for anyone looking to make their own horror movie.

Then again, you could say that about the whole third act of the movie. The first hour of the movie is uneven in spots, with the scenes in the hospital moving at a far slower pace than the more intense scenes where Dr. Loomis and the police hunt for Michael. But that final thirty minutes are brilliantly done, some of the best horror filmmaking I've seen in quite a while. If the first hour was meant to be just buildup for that third act, then it was totally worth it.

It's unfortunate, though, that Rosenthal isn't working from a very strong script. Written by Carpenter and Debra Hill, it's a weak effort all the way around. It honestly feels that they were roped into doing it with promises of a nice paycheck. One gets the impression that Carpenter and Hill just figured, "What the hell, let's just do a Friday the 13th knockoff and be done with it." The worst element of the whole thing is the characters, many of whom come off as incredibly weak. A lot of them are just there for Michael to kill, while the intelligent Laurie of the first movie is instead replaced by a whimpering ball of nerves that seems afraid of her own shadow.

And poor Dr. Loomis is almost rendered a parody of himself. He spends most of the movie waving his gun around, arguing with the cops about how evil Michael Myers is. Dr. Loomis even manages to get some random guy killed just because he was wearing a mask that looked a little bit like Michael's. Okay, I understand that Loomis is pretty much the Captain Ahab to Michael's Moby Dick, but still...

The cast is also a bit of a mixed bag as well. Like the characters, a lot of the actors are just there. Many of them are dull and wooden, like they couldn't be bothered to put forth enough effort. It's also a bummer that Jamie Lee Curtis isn't given more to do than be practically comatose until the third act. Her performance in the original Halloween is great, but here? Not so much. Curtis does what she can, but it's primarily a case of not having enough to work with.

There are, however, some good performances to be had. One comes from Charles Cyphers, who plays Haddonfield's sheriff with conviction and believability. He sadly leaves the movie about halfway through, which is a real shame because they could have done so much more with his character, and I'm sure Cyphers would have aced it. The movie's other great performance comes from Donald Pleasence. Yeah, he gets a little hammy, but what's so bad about that? Pleasence is awesome here, and is a hell of a lot of fun to watch in not just this movie, but in each Halloween movie he appeared in.

And that's the best thing I can say about Halloween II it's a fun, fun movie. Despite every little gripe I've yammered on about, the movie is entertaining from start to finish. It might not be the legendary classic that the first movie is, but it's still totally worth checking out. And how many horror sequels can say that? So check it out if you get the chance, and I hope you have a happy Halloween.

Final Rating: ***

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Slasher movie fans have long sang the praises of Black Christmas and Halloween as being the creators of slasher movies as we know them. But if they created the game, it was Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th that established the game's rules. Released in the summer of 1980 to cash in on the popularity of Halloween, Friday the 13th was surprisingly successful and launched a million knockoffs and wannabes that allowed slasher movies to dominate the horror genre during the '80s. And naturally, it got its own sequel as well. And as it would turn out, Friday the 13th Part 2 would not only be the first in a long line of sequels, but the one that would serve as the proper introduction to one of the horror genre's most enduring modern monsters.

Five years have passed since the events of the first movie, and the Camp Crystal Lake massacre ― and the mysterious disappearance of its sole survivor not long thereafter ― have become a local campfire legend. The legend also continues that the thought-dead Jason Voorhees survived his childhood drowning and watched as his psychotic mother's rampage was brought to a violent end, vowing bloody vengeance against anyone who would dare step foot in the area surrounding the lake. But those are just campfire stories, right?

They hopefully are, as Paul Holt (John Furey) has opened a new lakefront training lodge for potential camp counselors. The wannabe counselors are all set for a little summer fun, while Paul's hoping a little private time with his girlfriend Ginny (Amy Steel). But little does he know that unfortunately, some campfire legends are true. Jason (Steve Daskawisz) is very much alive and well, and he's got time (and teenagers) to kill.

Friday the 13th Part 2 came very early in the rise of slasher movies, and you can just vaguely make out the outline of the training wheels that both the franchise and the genre's basic formula were wearing at the time. Though many of the tropes and clichés commonly associated with the franchise and slasher movies in general are abundant, the movie never really hits a real stride until near the end. It's not a bad entry in the series by any means, but I just don't think it's one of the strongest either.

At the helm of this particular adventure is director Steve Miner, who would go on to direct not only the third Friday the 13th movie, but Halloween H20 as well. All he needs is a Nightmare on Elm Street movie and he's got the slasher hat trick. Miner's work here is hit or miss, as there are more than a few instances where it feels like he's just doing a half-assed remake of the first movie. The sequel was released barely a year after its predecessor, rushed to theaters in an attempt to strike while the iron was hot. Miner probably didn't have a lot of time to get fancy and creative, so I guess he figured he wouldn't try fixing what apparently wasn't broken.

But Miner does manage to scrounge up some really good moments. Some of the scares in the movie are very effective, and he builds some genuine suspense, especially during the last twenty minutes. There's flashes of brilliance among the disappointing parts, flashes that are good enough to make the movie more enjoyable than it probably should have been.

I usually follow my critique of the direction with my opinions regarding the script. But is there any reason to talk about it? The movie's not some post-modern satire like Scream or The Cabin in the Woods, so it's not like the writing will be Hemmingway. It's an '80s slasher movie; the script only exists to give the characters something to do so they aren't just standing around waiting for Jason to kill them.

Like I said about the direction, writer Ron Kurz seems to have borrowed heavily from the original Friday the 13th. He doesn't outright rip it off, but you can definitely see he's trying to replicate the formula at the very least. He shakes things up in a few places, like the scene where some of the characters actually leave the camp and head to the local bar for the rest of the movie. That's a heck of a way to thin out some of the characters without having to come up with death scenes.

I also enjoyed that Kurz included some characters that are actually likable. They aren't all that way, since there has to be some victims who you'll want to see Jason get his hands on. But there are multiple characters that you'll actually see yourself feeling bad for when they meet their inevitable and grisly demise.

It helps that there are a few strong performances among the cast too. Slasher movies aren't exactly known for their award-caliber acting, but this particular movie has some decent work in front of the camera. The strongest of them is Amy Steel, who plays the movie's resident "final girl." Steel plays the character as all "final girls" worth their salt should; she's vulnerable but tough, scared but smart. Steel makes her character not only charming but sympathetic and believable as well. While you might find yourself rooting for Jason more and more over the course of the dozen or so movies in this franchise, Steel's performance is so good that you'll find yourself rooting for her for a change.

And I should also highlight Steve Daskawisz, the man playing the movie's venerable killer. Though Warrington Gillette gets the credit for playing Jason despite appearing in only one scene, it was Daskawisz underneath that hood for much of the movie. (Yes, I said "hood." There's no iconic hockey mask here, only a sack that looks like it was stolen from the set of The Town That Dreaded Sundown.) Daskawisz is very good as Jason, giving him a sense of menace that Jason needs to be truly scary. He really makes you believe that he's going to find you and kill you and there's nothing you can do about it.

Friday the 13th Part 2 has long been one of the more popular sequels in the series. I don't know if I would call it one of mine, but I can see why it has its fans. It's a flawed movie, but it has some good scares and a talented heroine and villain. And it's the one that made Jason a true star to boot. So I'm going to give the movie three stars on the usual scale. And a word of warning: stay away from your local summer camp. Considering what today is, you never know who you could run into.

Final Rating: ***

Hatchet II (2010)

Though I'll admit that I haven't seen as many of them as I'd like to, I'm still a sucker for '80s slasher movies. I don't know what it is about them that I enjoy so much, but I can't help but sit down and watch them when I get the chance.

That's largely what drew me to Adam Green's Hatchet a few years ago. The movie was hyped by practically every horror news website there is as the second coming of the '80s slasher style, that it was a movie that could quite possibly be a game-changer for the entire horror genre. But that's all it was: hype. Hatchet, in truth, sucks. It was overblown, gratuitous, and was trying way too hard to replicate what came naturally for the movies Green wanted it to be like. It felt more like an unfunny parody than anything else.

But I guess Hatchet was successful, because Green got to make a sequel. I didn't and still don't see the need for Hatchet II, but hey, there it is. I will admit that I thought that it was a brave release, spending one weekend in sixty-eight AMC theaters without a rating from the MPAA. It didn't play anywhere within 100 miles of me, but I don't know if I'd have seen it anyway because of my feelings for the first one. But recently I figured what the heck, might as well at least rent the DVD and give it a shot. And I'm actually glad I did, because Hatchet II was nowhere near as bad as I'd initially feared.

The movie picks up immediately where the first Hatchet ended, with Marybeth (Danielle Harris) in the grip of homicidal monster Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder). She barely manages to escape and limps back to civilization, where she is quick to hunt down "Reverend Zombie" (Tony Todd), the fake voodoo priest who organized the boat tour that took her into Crowley's territory in the first place.

Marybeth tells Reverend Zombie about how everyone on the tour was massacred by Crowley, but all she wants is to reclaim the bodies of her father and brother (who Crowley killed in the first movie's prologue) and give them a proper burial rather than let them rot in some madman's shack in the swamp. Having figured out a way to seemingly kill Crowley for good, Reverend Zombie agrees to help Marybeth and assembles a lynch mob to back them up.

Considering how much I disliked the first Hatchet, I wasn't expecting a whole heck of a lot from the sequel. But Hatchet II is surprisingly entertaining. It's a flawed movie, of course, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The movie is a fun ride that, while risking becoming as unbearably gratuitous as its predecessor, actually does come close to matching the atmosphere of the '80s slasher flicks its creator intended for it to pay tribute to.

Adam Green returns to the world of Victor Crowley as the sequel's writer and director, and his efforts are a big improvement over his work with the first Hatchet. I really didn't like what he did with the first movie, but one could argue that it was due to his relative inexperience at the time. But as far as Hatchet II's direction goes, Green does a fine job. It's more polished and slick than the majority of those old-school slasher flicks and the kills are gratuitous to the point of being comedic, but Green manages to make Hatchet II feel very much like a modern blast from the past. Or at the very least, it comes a lot closer to that than the first Hatchet did.

I felt Green's script was inconsistent, however. He nails the all the character archetypes, but it doesn't seem to know if he wants to make a legitimate slasher movie or a parody of them. He gets bits and pieces of the time-tested formula right, but he spends way too much effort in trying to cram the movie full of the different comedic elements. For example, the redneck lynch mob argues over cookies and about how "Chad" is a really douchebaggy name. This takes up at least ten total minutes of screen time. Very little of the intended humor is actually funny, and like I said earlier, the various kills Green has dreamed up reach a point where they become more silly than anything else.

If the movie was supposed to be a satire of the genre's conventions like the Scream franchise or Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, then Green didn't really do that great a job. And if the movie was meant to be a serious slasher movie, then Green did even worse. You'd think for a guy who wanted to create the next great horror icon, Green would at least attempt to work in some horror among all the terrible comedy.

At least his cast doesn't let the script bog them down. In the role of Hatchet II's resident "final girl" is Danielle Harris, who longtime horror devotees will recognize from her appearances in four of the Halloween movies. She steps into the role Tamara Feldman played in the first movie and immediately improves upon Feldman's terrible performance. Harris's Southern accent isn't completely convincing, but she is still very likable, engaging, and sympathetic. I really enjoyed Harris in the role, and it makes me wish she'd been hired to appear in the first Hatchet too.

I also really liked Tony Todd, whose role gets beefed up from the cameo he had in the first movie. You can always count on Todd to be great no matter what movie he's in or what character he's playing, and this proves to be no exception. He's suitably creepy in the role, playing it with so much conviction that he practically runs away with the movie.

But it isn't hard to enjoy his performance, when most of the cost beyond he and Harris are awful. The worst is Tom Holland, the director of Child's Play and the 1985 version of Fright Night. You can tell he has more experience behind the camera than in front of it, because his acting is awful. I often pick on some actors for being wooden, but Holland is the first actor I've seen who'd be in danger if termites got loose on the set. The guy is obviously not an actor, and I'm pretty sure the only reason he was brought into the movie at all so the cast could have one more big name from the horror genre.

And I guess I should at least make a passing mention to Kane Hodder, who returns to the role he originated in the first movie. It makes sense to have him play the killer, since if you're gonna make a movie with a wannabe Jason, you might as well have the guy who played Jason four times. There really isn't a lot required of Hodder outside of acting like a monster and killing people, and he does it like a champ. I said in my critique of the first movie that it felt like he was autopilot, but he does show a bit more effort here. But really, any faults would probably be due more to how Green treats the character than how Hodder plays him.

I know I've spent the bulk of this review ragging on the movie's various flaws, but Hatchet II isn't that bad a movie. It doesn't live up to any of the hype or marketing invested in it, I must say that. But the movie can totally work as a fun little flick to watch on Halloween. And even at its worst, it's still an improvement over the first movie. I hear they're prepping Hatchet III right now, so let's hope it continues that trend.

Final Rating: ***

Scream 4 (2011)

When Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson made Scream in 1996, they ended up sparking a post-modern slasher movie revival. Studios were knocking out Scream wannabes right and left, practically all of them having an ironic (almost to the point of being farcical) take on horror as a whole. But this trend, along with the Scream franchise, came to an end at the turn of the twenty-first century.

It was replaced by a new trend, that of remakes and reboots. Beginning with the success of Gore Verbinski's Americanization of the Japanese movie Ringu in 2002 and Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004, Hollywood has practically become obsessed with remaking and rebooting classic (and sometimes forgotten) horror movies and franchises. And as the Scream franchise was always wont to dissect the horror genre, Craven and Williamson have dusted the series off and brought us their own ironic take on it with Scream 4.

Fifteen years have passed since the original Woodsboro massacre, an event that the local teenagers mark by playing pranks on one another and hanging the famous "Ghostface" costume all over town. One of the massacre's survivors, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), has returned home to Woodsboro on the last stop of the press tour to promote her new self-help book. She quickly reconnects with Dewey and Gale Riley (David Arquette and Courteney Cox), along with her younger cousin Jill (Emma Roberts).

But Sidney is soon horrified to discover that not only has she come back to Woosboro, but Ghostface has too. Ghostface begins picking off Jill's friends one by one, his murders based on a modern twist on the original massacre. Sidney, Dewey, Gale, and Jill must discover Ghostface's identity and stop his or her killing spree.

It's been eleven years since Scream 3 seemingly concluded the franchise, but Scream 4 is proof enough that any series — no matter how dormant it's thought to be — can have a big comeback. And believe it or not, but Scream 4 isn't a bad movie at all. It's got its flaws, bit it's still a fun throwback to '90s horror and a very cool revival of a franchise I thought was dead.

Returning to helm the latest chapter in the saga is the one and only Wes Craven. I know that I said before that I thought the original Scream was his last truly good movie. Time will be the judge, but as it stands right now, Scream 4 may be the one to break him out of that slump. His direction here is really good. Though one could make the argument that Craven's direction — and the whole movie, really — are just more of the same as far as stylistic choices go, Craven's work is still more fun than fail. There's some nice cinematography and some very well-made set pieces, but the truth is that Scream 4 is really more driven by the writing and characters.

It always surprises me to see a slasher movie with good writing. They're so visually driven that the scripts are usually secondary. But Kevin Williamson's script for Scream 4 is really smart. It not only takes shots at the remake/reboot trend, but at how media and telecommunications have evolved since the original Scream was released in 1996. Instead of calling landlines as he did during the '90s, the killer instead communicates with his victims via text messages and Facebook. And instead of an external voice changer, the killer uses a smartphone app to give them the Ghostface voice. Some of Williamson's attempts to bring the franchise into the twenty-first century feel forced (the kid who's always walking around with the webcam headset, for example), but he makes it work for the most part.

The one part of Williamson's script I honestly didn't like, though, was the revelation of the killer. I thought it was silly to the point of being dumb, and the motive felt really similar to that of one of Scream 2's killers. I will admit, however, that I thought it worked in the context of satirizing remakes and reboots. But still, I can't help but think it was just a wee bit lame.

But what isn't lame is the acting. For the most part, I thought the cast did a great job. It's just unfortunate that they don't seem to have a lot to do, like their parts are barely there at all. Nearly everyone makes a go at it, though. Franchise stalwart Neve Campbell once again returns to the role of the ill-fated Sidney Prescott, and once again plays the character with gusto. Campbell plays Sidney as a woman who feels like she's conquered the demons of her past and wants to help others find their way to peace. Campbell's performance imbues Sidney with a lot of strength and sympathy, a Final Girl of the most respectable type. She's consistently been one of the Scream saga's best elements, and the series would be poorer without her.

The same can be said for Roger L. Jackson, who once again plays the role of Ghostface's voice. Campbell may be the franchise's emotional crux, but Jackson is just as important. Some of his dialogue is kinda hokey, but he delivers those lines with such anger and ferocity that he still manages to be scary.

Courteney Cox and David Arquette also return, their own recent marital troubles strangly mirrored by their characters (which I'm sure was unintentional). Cox and Arquette are great, both of them adding a lot of heart to the movie. Cox is especially fun, her "I'm gonna figure this out if it kills me" attitude being one of the movie's most entertaining elements.

The rest of the cast has some standouts, particularly Rory Culkin and Marley Shelton. But perhaps the best member of the supporting cast is Hayden Panettiere. Scream 4 is her first really big role after the cancellation of Heroes, and she makes the absolute most of it. Panettiere is cool, sexy, and downright fun. Every second she's on the screen, she practically steals the movie. And in the event Craven and Williamson make Scream 5, I hope they can find a way to include her.

But the acting isn't all good, sadly. The movie's one bad performance comes from Emma Roberts. And when I say she's bad, I mean she's terrible. She absolutely sucks. Roberts is so bad that she actually makes me resent the movie's existence. You know how bad you have to be to accomplish that? Really bad. And I know the movie's been out for a while, but is it too late for Craven to hire a new actress to replace her? Can we use some CGI to eliminate her from the DVD release in a few months? Honestly, there is literally nothing positive I can say about Roberts's performance, which is really sad because she brings the whole movie down.

But don't let Roberts's awful performance dissuade you from seeing Scream 4. It more than likely will not appeal to anyone who doesn't already like the franchise or slasher movies in general, but it's a cool revival of an old story. It's like finding out that band you liked during the '90s got back together for a reunion tour. The movie doesn't match the quality of the original, but I'll gladly call it the best of the sequels. And honestly, I want to see Scream 5 now. Promise me more Hayden Panettiere and I'll get in line to see it right now.

Final Rating: ***½