Bloody Murder 2 (2003) — Triskaidekafiles

BLOODY MURDER

WRITER: John Stevenson

DIRECTOR: Rob Spera

STARRING: Katy Woodruff as Tracy
Kelly Cunning as Mike
Amanda Magarian as Sofie
Tiffany Shepis as Angela
Tom Mullen as Ryan
Lane Anderson as James
Raymond Smith as Elvis
Arthur Benjamin as Rick
John Colton as Sheriff Miller

QUICK CUT: Friendships are cut short as summer camp comes to an end.

THE MORGUE

Tracy - A young woman dealing with the death of her brother several years ago. it makes her a bit standoffish, but that’s to be expected, when people turn her tragedy into a punchline. Otherwise, she’s fairly smart, and will do what she can to help a friend.

Mike - Tracy’s boyfriend, and really hates how her brother’s death overshadows their relationship. You get the sense he’s only with her to get something out of it.

Angela - The kinda bad girl who likes sex. You know the type in these movies.

Rick - The camp’s owner and head counselor. He’s a little stern, and a bit twitchy, but since all his money is invested in the murder camp, it’s to be expected.

Sheriff Miller - The local sheriff and figure of authority. He’s fairly helpful, and he could be a lot worse to these kids seemingly wasting his time with constant calls about Trevor Moorehouse sightings.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Welcome to September, it's time to close down camp for the summer, and that means we are returning to Camp Placid Pines for more Bloody Murder 2. Yes, the first movie somehow got a sequel? Anyways, let's do this.

Things start off with Tracy, the sister of Jason from the first movie, wandering through a snowy forest. She sees her brother and hurries to him, and he tells her she shouldn't be here.

He is then summarily sliced in two by Trevor Moorehouse...which is when Tracy wakes up because IT WAS ALL A DREAM.

HEY JASON WANNA CHECK OUT MY NEW CHAINSAW AND HOCKEY MASK??

She awakens at a camp, where she's been working as a counselor…way to follow in your bro's footsteps.

On that subject; it had been a hot minute since I'd seen the first movie, and even THEN, Jason is such a common name, especially in this time period, AND slasher movies, that I genuinely wasn't sure this was a sequel sequel, or just a reused common name.

All the counselors gather and we meet everyone, and their boss, Patrick minus the Pat. They've got a lotta work to do to get the camp shut down for the season, and we best get to it! Oh, and Rick also brought on James to help as an extra set of hands.

Everyone splits off to tackle the jobs they gotta do, and we follow Tracy and her boyfriend Mike, and she comments the leaves are turning early this year...

We cut immediately to nighttime and the gang gathered around the campfire, and they decide to play a game of...Bloody Murder!

But since the game is all based around the lore of Trevor, Tracy is uncomfortable and bows out, opting to head back to her cabin.

Mike goes after her to aplogise, and once they're alone, he tries and pressure her into things, and doesn't take no lightly. He gets really upset and acts like since he's been nice and patient, she owes him. Yeah, no, buddy.

Back at the campfire, James is asking about the backstory, since he's new here, and the movie can infodump without being too clunky. He doesn't buy it though, since it's the same story every camp has.

Let me tell you the legend of Madman Marz…

So they blindfold James and go hide, so he can find them and...I just love that this town's local idea of big adult mature fun is just...hide and seek, with a spooooky name.

The first person he finds is Mike, spitting up blood and clutching his blood soaked throat. A man with an axe bursts out of the woods and...IT WAS ALL A PRANK!

So uh...we really are just recycling the first movie, huh? I mean, I get it, people watching this would want more of the original, but still.

James doesn't appreciate being pranked, a fight almost breaks out, but everyone storms off pretty steamed instead. James is left all alone, until an actual masked killer jumps out of the woods and tears him apart.

Oh that’s gonna cost him an arm and a leg.

The next day, people notice James' absence, and just assumed he buggered off after the prank. A decent enough way to keep the plot obscured from your characters.

Later, two of the counselors are continuing the work, and talking about stuff. One of them points out he doesn't believe in this stuff, because if he DID, he, being a black guy, would NOT be sticking around. We do appreciate when characters are genre savvy around here.

Ryan starts making out with Angela, and unlike her namesake, does appear to be all girl. But hey, no shame if she isn't, or if Ryan is into that. Just sayin'.

...Where was I? OH right, Ryan gets a page from Rick to meet him and have a chat about last night, and he goes to not make the boss any angrier.

Unfortunately, Rick is REALLY upset with Ryan, and kills him with an arrow through the neck. Or maybe it's just our killer. Or, maybe...both?

Meanwhile, Tracy thinks she sees Trevor Moorehouse lurking in the woods, and Mike brings in the sheriff to look around, to ease her mind.

They don't find anything, but the sheriff tells Tracy to call him any time if she sees anything, and they'll have a deputy swing by regularly to do sweeps.

So they finish up work, and Mike gets handsy and kissy with Tracy. Which she quickly puts a stop to, because this guy canNOT read the room.

He gets very insistent and surly, and DUDE you gotta learn boundaries. "How DARE you be upset and not put out because we make jokes about your dead brother??"

Rick tells the crew that Ryan sent him a text saying he quit, and everyone buys it because Ryan's a bit of a dick and pissed off at being called out on it. Well, not everyone believes it, Tracy doesn't, and she finds all these disappearances suss, even if they are reasonable.

Mike and Angela storm off, and he finds her wandering around, and they end up hooking in the woods. I ain't even gonna make excuses for Mike. Elvis stumbles upon them through from the trees, so their secret isn't so secret.

After they finish, Mike can't find his clothes and conveniently goes looking for them. Tracy hears Ryan's distinctive pager sound, and finds his dead body before Mike finds his clothes.

The others hear the screams and come running, and Mike buggers off, telling Angela they can't find him there with her. So he leaves her all alone. With a dead body. Continuing to be a standup guy.

Hey, are you almost done? I reeeally gotta go.

So the cops are called back up, and yes, we have murder! Some of the crew go to take showers, while people keep looking for Rick and Mike. Meanwhile, the killer punches out the deputies guarding the shower door, and sneaks up on Tracy.

It's a decently tense scene of will he/won't he, as Tracy hears noises, and is paranoid anyways, but she manages to escape unscathed.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Elvis, who dies like his namesake in the bathroom.

You were genre savvy, but not genre savvy enough, my friend..

That body is found quickly, and they finally come across James' body as well. On top of all that, they find the bloody mask in Mike's cabin. So we have a suspect.

I do like them leaning into expectations, with a suspected slasher named Michael in a white mask, like Jason in the first movie. Also having the head counselor named Rick, which is similar to the first movie's actual killer.

We mill about for a bit, and Tracy comes up to a computer, but instead of doing an e-mail voiceover, she finds a video camera that was pointed at Mike's cabin, to check the footage. What she finds only proves his guilt, as the killer exists the cabin shortly after Mike enters.

Mike returns at that precise moment and of course Tracy things he's guilty as all heck. He tries to explain, and stop her from leaving, but that just draws the attention of the lurking police. He's quickly caught and taken away.

The girls start to pack up, and Sofie tries to console Tracy who is going through it. And this is it, this is as close as this movie gets to the shoulda been gay idea of the first. Which is a shame.

Back at the cabins, the girls are sitting around, and to her credit, Angela comes clean and says she's Mike's alibi. Tracy has a great line about how under any other circumstance, she'd probably claw the other girl's eyes out.

The girls scurry about to check pagers, figuring out someone must be lying about them, and then Tracy looks at the video tape, to find evidence of doctoring. And evidence she does find, as she notices a note they left behind is visible, and then suddenly disappears.

Meanwhile, Angela goes to find Ryan's pager to check, and unfortunately finds the killer instead.

Tracy scurries around to steal Rick's keys and try and escape, but runs right into the head counselor, after finding James' jacket. Rick tries to explain, but Tracy believes he's the killer.

Rick tries to explain, but eventually Tracy locks him up in a shed until some actual authorities arrive.

That doesn't hold him very long, and he corners Tracy just in time for the sheriff to arrive and shoot him dead.

So the sheriff gives Tracy a ride back to town, and tells her that it was actually him that did all the killings. Dude you were THIS close to getting away with it.

He stops the truck and drags the girl out. While he is getting ready to kill her too, and she asks the pertinent question; why? And it's all because he's actually Trevor's father, and someone has to pay for what happened to his son, and he's gonna make sure this camp stays closed!

Sofie the forgotten returns to the plot and knocks the sheriff over, giving the girls a chance to run. He chases them, and the guy is wheezing so hard, if they can just keep this chase going, he's probably gonna die of a heart attack.

Also, yes, they do clarify that it was the new sheriff here who killed Jason at the end of the first movie.

Eventually, the sheriff corners Tracy, but before he can do anything, the actual Trevor shows up, and slices dad's head off with a chainsaw. There's a moment where you're not sure what he's gonna do to Tracy, but he just walks away, leaving her untouched. At least, physically. I think everything else is gonna stick with her for a long time.

You will always remember the day you were ALMOST killed by Trevor Moorehouse.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks all right. About what you’d expect from an early 2000s low budget slasher flick.

Audio: Sounds decent enough. Perfectly fine.

Sound Bite: “You have some degree of choice in if you show your boobs or not, and to whom. Me? I'm black no matter what I do."

Body Count: This feels a bit light, but they pace it out nicely enough that it doesn’t feel like it.

1 - 17 minutes in and James gets his legs hacked off and his brains bashed in.
2 - Ryan takes an arrow to the neck.
3 - Trevor slits Elvis's neck.
4 - Angela gets a machete to the face
5 - The sheriff shoots Rick
6 - Mike is dead in the back of the sheriff's car.
7 - The sheriff gets chainsawed good.

Best Corpse: The first is the best this time around. You don’t get to see enough dismemberments in movie these days.

Blood Type - C+: Not a ton of blood, but they use it nicely when it does come up.

Sex Appeal: Guys, it’s a movie with Tiffany Shepis in it.

Drink Up! every time there is a commercial break. Trust me, you’ll understand.

Movie Review: I mostly like this movie. Like with a lot of sequels, it doesn’t really hold a candle to the original, and even that isn’t so great of a movie. Bloody Murder 2 doesn’t do a whole lot different from the first movie, which you kinda expect, but it also feels less because of it. It is a bit faster paced, with more drive behind it, but that first movie just had some charm I really vibed with. Still, no name checking every other sentence, a faster pace, they did see some spots to improve upon. But after the first movie, this one just doesn’t have quite the same impact. But I like the cast, again, I like the genre savvy characters, and it’s a quaint little slasher throwback from the early 2000s. If you didn’t like the first movie, this isn’t really gonna change your mind, and by this point in time, it was already overshadowed by dozens of other slashers. Three out of five video cameras.

Entertainment Value: It definitely doesn’t have the same level of fun as the first one, as it fixes a number of that movie’s flaws. But again, the casting is good, there’s some decent kills, and some funny moments. Worth seeing if you liked the first one, but when even your mediocre original movie isn’t that great, it’s a hard sell. There’s nothing terribly wrong here, there’s just everything else that’s better. And some camp acting or something to laugh at might have brought this up a bit more. Two out of five inner tubes.