The Texas Jason Massacre!

I forgot to bring a notepad or laptop to the movie, so this is going to be a little less clear than my later – I-now-have-the-film-on-DVD-post is likely to be, but for right now, here’s the stream of consciousness that comes from liveblogging the film as I run it back through my head with my eyes closed.

Why are they ruining what might be an effective kinda-black and white flashback to the end of the first movie by cutting to black and running credits? I accept that you want opening credits, but if you must, play them over black before the story starts, or after the title card. Whatever you do, don’t interrupt storytelling with them. Also, Courier? Were the other fonts all too pricey?

You know what? Scratch that. I don’t accept that you need opening credits. We’re already here in the theatre. Do you think we’re going to leave if we don’t find out immediately that Danielle Panabaker is definitely in the movie? And if it’s just egos of the various actors, it’s time to suck it up – if people are impressed by you, they’ll look for your name in the end credits based on the character it’s attached to. If they’re not impressed by you, then they won’t care who that random name at the beginning of the movie was attached to.

Oh good, we’re opening with more pot-loving people who are going to get murdered for loving pot. Great.

Now we’re in the backwoods of Texas, where people are grimy and sweaty. Great. Since this clearly isn't set in Texas, the griminess doesn't seem entirely appropriate.

Yeah, it’s the entire same production team as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What a surprise there. Including Daniel Pearl for more incoherent filming techniques.

I kind of understand Jason killing the campers at the beginning. The pot patch is in his area, so they wind up getting killed. I’d prefer it if the people who entered his house were the primary, activating targets, but what are you going to do?

He used a bear trap? How on earth could he possibly guess where the person was going to stand?

Really? She looks just like Jason’s mother? That’s a happy coincidence. Well, if they wanted that, why did they cast 50-year-old Nana Visitor as Jason’s mother and then put her in older age makeup?

Also, at the beginning, instead of killing unrelated counsellors one year and then twenty years later, she may actually be killing the specific people ‘responsible’ for her son’s drowning. But here’s the thing – her son is like 10 at the time. Shouldn’t Mrs. Voorhees be a little younger? Or did she have Jason when she was already in her 40s?

Are they seriously saying that no one in this movie knows how to open a bear trap? I’ve never been near a bear trap in my life, but don’t you just have to press the two levers on the sides, releasing the lock so that it can be pried back open?

More to the point, why is Jason going to these ridiculous lengths to kill people? Tying them up in a sleeping bag and dangling it over a fire? This suggests that he’s enjoying torturing someone. I know that everyone involved in the production of this movie seems to have forgotten the fact, but let me go on record reminding you – he isn’t Leatherface, and this isn’t the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You’ve got a perfectly good knife in your hand there, buddy, so what’s this Rube Goldberg crap?

More to the point, that’s not how fire works. The character dies because she’d cooked inside the bag, and then it burns open and her body falls out. Shouldn't the bag have burned open long before the fire did enough damage to kill her?

In addition, that’s not how gravity works. At fist I assumed that the ropes holding the bag were also tied around her feet, which is what was keeping her hanging with her head towards the fire. But then when the bag burns open, she comes tumbling out, while the bag remains hanging. So if there was nothing suspending her, just the bag, why wasn’t she in a ball at the bottom of the bag?

You know, if a homeless guy lives in the ramshackle house, then by definition, he’s not homeless. He's squatter. There's a different word for that.

How could they possibly think no one lived in that house? There were scraps of food all over dishes. The child’s bed was almost made. It’s clearly inhabited.

"It looks like it's from another century." It is. The 20th century.

Hey, Ryan Hansen from Veronica Mars is in this movie. Playing that one character he plays.

Really? The families of the other missing victims have gone to look ‘somewhere else’? Why would they do that? People know that they disappeared around Crystal Lake, and all five of them were never seen again. Why stop looking? Only six weeks later?

So there was an extensive police search. That somehow missed the fact that Camp Crystal Lake and Jason's old house are clearly inhabited. And have electricity.

Here’s the bigger question, though – are we now supposed to imagine Jason cleaning up after himself? They announced that there were ‘no car, no sign of them’. What did Jason do with the car? Did he drive it away? And just how thorough was this cleanup? Not only are we supposed to think about Jason folding up tents and storing them away, but also burying ashes and half-burned logs from a fire?

Oh my god, is this film terrible.

I like that Sam is going to literally every house in Crystal Lake. That being said, when he’s driving away from the crazy dog lady’s place, it’s clearly sunset, and then it’s broad daylight in the next scene.

Isn't this enough evidence for Sam to go back to the cops? A woman just suggested that she knows that there's a dude out there killing people who venture into his area. May I suggest a few follow-up questions? "Who is this man? Who else has he killed? Where is this area you're talking about?" Oh, she doesn't want to answer the questions? Well that's why god invented police officers.

Wow, the editor’s really going overboard trying to hide the fact that Sam is like six inches taller than the fussy frat boy?

There, Sam, you’ve found a cracked GPS unit. That’s all the evidence you need that they were there. Go get the cops. What? You’re not doing that? Instead you’re wandering around in the dark? Okay, that works too, I guess…

So Jason’s going to kill this guy because he took pot form the garden? Jason seems really protective of this pot. Is it his pot? Does he have a drug-running business on the side?

Why are they being so matter-of-fact about showing Jason off? They’re just letting us see him walking around in broad daylight! And his face was revealed like a third of the way into the movie in a totally throw-away scene.

I can’t believe I just watched a scene about Jason randomly finding the hockey mask and then checking out how he looks in a mirror. This is one slim degree removed from being a Wayans Brothers parody of a Friday the 13th movie.

Apparently the filmmakers think there’s absolutely nothing funnier than a guy bitching about people messing up his house. Over and over again. It’s not like this is setting up for a punchline or anything – this is his entire character.

Wanting to do what people tell you not to because they tell you not to do it doesn’t make you a sociopath. It just makes you a dick.

Wow, is this lake in Texas. It’s so low and dirty and surrounded by brush. Would anyone ever call this place ‘Crystal Lake’? This is the worst Crystal Lake since part 3's "Crystal Muddy Pond".

Jason just shot someone with a bow and arrow. Oh my god, now we’re seeing him with the elaborate compound bow. You’ve just forced me to imagine Jason standing in the forest for hours on end, practicing archery, sighting down the shaft with his one good eye.

So she doesn’t know to swim away from a boat heading for her. And as such, doesn’t deserve to live. Also, there are two sides of a very narrow lake that she’s pretty near the middle of. One side has Jason on it. The other side is a three minute swim away, but would take Jason half an hour to walk to. Which side does she swim to? The Jason side, naturally.

Oh, good, he pulled her out of the water so her breasts were exposed one more time after she’d died. Classy work, filmmakers.

This is the second scene in the film about someone planning to masturbate to a magazine. What the hell is going on here?

You know, it's nice that this is one of those magic lakes where sound doesn't carry. So when the woman is screaming in the lake, and when the boat is crashing into the shore at full speed, no one hears it, the way they would in the actual woods.

Who does Asian guy think Jason is? I know he’s drunk and stoned, but the fact that he freaked out about the broken lamp proves that he’s got a range of emotion. I’d like to see more of that when the seven foot tall monster appears behind him.

Look, I accept that Jason runs. I understand that, in order for him to get where he needs to be when he needs to be there, it must happen at it must happen at some point, but I never, ever, ever, want to see him do it.

Also, it would be great if he wasn’t throwing axes, either.

Now he’s posing on a rooftop with his machete out while people are walking around inside? Who is he posing for?

Are they trying to imply that Jason just came in through that window? Because he’s nine feet tall and five hundred pounds. Are you expecting me to believe that Jason quietly opened a window, moved some bottles to the floor, crawled through, replaced the bottles, and then half-closed the window? If so, then you and I have very different understandings of Jason’s character, Mister Nispel.

Jason shoved a poker through that guy’s eye. Where did he get a fireplace poker on the second floor? Are there more fireplaces up there? The black guy had a fireplace poker earlier, but it seems odd that Jason would, after killing him, pick up the poker, stick it in his belt, and then walk around for five minutes waiting for a chance to use it.

There are many ways Jason can sabotage a car. He can slash the tires. Stick something sharp straight through the entire engine block. Roughly tear apart wires, tubes, and belts with his bare hands. What he doesn’t do is steal the keys.

Okay, you just spent the past five minutes running away from a crazed murderer and made it to a road, where you were almost hit by a tow truck that happened to be driving by. Luckily, the driver slowed down enough so that you could get out of the way. Now that you’ve got a ride away from this terrible situation, don’t you want to hop in and get away? No? What’s that? You’d rather suspect that the driver is somehow the killer who’s been chasing you through the woods, and approach the car so slowly that the real killer has a chance to catch up with you? Here’s a tip, genius, if the killer was driving, he would have run you over.

What? The? Hell?

Did they seriously just run into Jason’s house? Don’t you realize that you’re trying to run away from Jason?! Why would you elect to run towards his house!? It’s not like this is Part 2 again, and they just randomly stumbled onto it. Sam specifically announces that this is the way that Jason was headed earlier – so why are you going that way?! That’s the only place he’s guaranteed to find you!

He kicked over a lamp, and the underground dirt hallway exploded into flame. Apparently, Jason builds his tunnels out of gasoline.

Sam is really lucky that Jason seems to have forgotten how to kill people for their entire fight.

You know, pretending to be Jason’s mom is a great way of distracting him when he’s trying to push your brother’s head into a wood chipper. A better way is to pick up any of the million sharp things surrounding you and stick it deep into Jason’s skull.

If I could ask the writers of this film one question, it would be this: What was Sam and his sister’s plan? I mean, if Jason hadn’t jumped back out of the water, what did they imagine was going to happen after they threw Jason into the lake? When later that day they explained to the police that all of those people had been killed by Jason, and that they’d killed him, the police would have asked where the body was. They would have replied that they wrapped it in a tarp and threw it in the lake. The cops would next ask "Why did you do that?"

So this is the question – when the police asked them that question, what would Sam and his sister have said in response?

You haven’t committed a crime! You don’t have to ‘cover up’ the fact that you killed Jason! He held you captive in a hole for six weeks! This would be like Jodie Foster shooting Buffalo Bill in the head, then after dragging the Governor(Senator?)’s daughter from the pit, having the prisoner panic, frantically demanding ‘How are we going to get rid of the body?’

Okay, if you consider making an awful movie a crime, then yeah, I guess they did commit the one crime.