For those of you put off by the laughable title, bad cover art and cheesy
tagline which states ‘Trevor vs. Jason’ you have to asses the situation at
hand.
The distributor could either have released the film with some carbon copy
‘Halloween’ artwork and throw in a reference to ‘Freddy vs. Jason’
ensuring that youngsters looking for a bit of a laugh with their friends
on Halloween night, will take a chance and spend their parents hard earned
money on it, which they did. On the other hand, had they wanted to make 0
profit, they could have released it complete with it’s original artwork
and title which is of course ‘Bloody Murder 2’.
For those of you who don’t know, ‘Bloody Murder’ (which received similar
but less drastic treatment here in the UK) was released 3 years ago to
dire reviews. Critically slated as utter crap, the film concerned Jason
Voorhees wannabe Trevor Moorhouse, who not only wanted to be Jason, but
did exactly everything he did too.
So, we were treated to a crap story, a crap cast, crap lighting, acting,
editing etc, etc the whole affair was so crap that I bet even the craft
services were crap! get the picture yet? Although I did have one
favourite scene, that of a clump of dummies flopping out of a tree onto
the lead girl, which has to be the most basic special effect I have ever
seen!!
After the horror community got over the shock, they forgot all about it,
until about a year later when the sequel was announced. About a year
after that, the first reviews began appearing online and to my horror they
were favourable!
I can now confirm that it’s true…..in the most shocking case of it’s
kind…we have a sequel that is far superior to it’s predecessor!!
It has been five years since the first spate of murders and the
counsellors at camp Placid Pines have all just survived the summer!! (now
that IS original). However, they have 3 days to close up camp for the
fall season, and it’s now that old Trevor pops up to cause problems for
the group.
Ok so the plot isn’t that original, but what makes this film much better
is a good cast, (watch out for Tiffany Shepis) a decent score, good
effects work, a couple of decent scares, decent deaths and even some good
camerawork.
I am amazed that the worst slasher film ever, has been totally turned
around and now has franchise potential.
Credit goes to Director Rob Spera as this is quite a treat at a time of
year when the home video market is flooded with many tricks (most of which
I’ll no doubt review soon).
OVERALL SUMMARY
A good effort from all concerned, leads to a much better and well received
sequel.
