Freddy vs. Jason review
20 years ago, the long-awaited showdown between Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees finally took place. Does it hold up? Place your bets.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Freddy vs. Jason
Directed by Ronny Yu
Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift
Starring Monica Keena, Jason Ritter, Kelly Rowland, Katherine Isabelle, Ken Kirzinger and Robert Englund
Freddy vs. Jason Review
The story of the making of Freddy vs. Jason is always going to be more interesting than the movie itself. Stuck in development hell seemingly forever, the showdown of the century ended up taking place…in the wrong century altogether. The two 80s horror icons finally faced off 10 years after the first tease…and over 15 years past their peaks. Despite the delay, moviegoers were so eager to see the monster mash it delivered the biggest box office success either franchise had ever seen. And despite its wild success…it remains the only slasher movie of its kind twenty years later.
To be fair, mixing these two particular slasher icons is a bit tricky. Jason Voorhees is best known for stalking around campgrounds and brutally murdering any horny teenager who happens by. Freddy Krueger exists in suburban teenagers’ nightmares and kills more psychologically and methodically. Aside from their desire to kill people…the two don’t have a lot in common. They don’t even hunt in the same world. Most importantly, Friday the 13th movies and A Nightmare on Elm Street movies don’t feel anything alike.
Freddy vs. Jason gets around the latter by making a movie that doesn’t feel like either. Sure, it has its moments of Nightmare like dreamscapes and Friday like slaughter…but this looks and feels like an early 2000s slasher. An era where Freddy and Jason barely exist. Freddy hasn’t been seen since his meta outing Wes Craven’s New Nightmare in 1994. Outside of the future set Jason X…there hadn’t been a Jason movie for ten years. It was the end of that Friday (Jason Goes to Hell) that New Line Cinema provided the tease for Freddy vs. Jason.
After being defeated by a mythical dagger wielded by a member of the Voorhees bloodline (the series got very, very stupid) Jason’s mask is pulled into hell by a familiar glove. Interestingly, the hand of Freddy was played by four-time Jason Voorhees actor Kane Hodder. Ten years later…Hodder would be recast as the production was looking for someone taller to give Jason a size advantage in the showdown. Robert Englund did return as Freddy (for the final time on film). Having played the character in all seven previous movies…people weren’t going to accept the role being recast. He’s still great here…even if we are getting the peak of “Loud Freddy”. He shouts so many lines it feels like the performance was meant for the stage not the screen.
The plot of Freddy vs. Jason is…ok. Given the amount of time that was put into finding the story it is certainly underwhelming…but when you read about the ideas that weren’t used…this is fine. The adults in Springwood have found a way to stop Freddy from killing all their children. They use a drug to suppress dreams and eventually…everyone just forgot about the Springwood Slasher. He recruits Jason to start a massacre so that the fear will return, and he can regain his power. It’s a decent concept. Mostly we’re just biding our time until the two inevitably face off, however.
Even though we’ve seen Jason killing people everywhere from Manhattan to outer space…watching him skulk through the suburbs is strange. It does give us some great kills though. A douchebag character folded backwards in a bed, a decapitation with a delayed payoff, a cornfield massacre while on fire… Freddy vs. Jason doesn’t skimp on the good ideas. There is also a great moment where Freddy is about to get his first kill in a long time only for Jason to get to them in the real world first. It’s a cool idea.
What isn’t as cool are the human characters we follow throughout the story. Lori (Monica Keena) is a fine final girl (even if they saddle her with one of the dumbest lines in slasher history. Think of the ground that covers). Jason Ritter is also fine as her boyfriend Will. The problem isn’t really the characters (aside from the clear Jason Mewes rip-off) …it’s how dumb their storyline is. It is completely ridiculous that these people can figure out Freddy’s plan, for starters. A clear moment where the writers needed the characters to figure something out for the plot to move forward…but no one in a million years would just guess that Freddy Krueger is using Jason to get people to remember him. They just…guess that. We’re supposed to accept that this is something they figured out.
While Lori’s memorable “Freddy died by fire, Jason by water…how can we use that” line is laughably awful…it also points to a script problem. Jason isn’t afraid of water in the previous movies. Sure, he’s drowned and been chained to the bottom of a lake repeatedly…but he also goes back into the water all the time. Here, again because of a plot need, they paint Jason’s biggest fear as water. It’s ridiculous. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea as a concept. Had that been his kryptonite since the time he first appeared in Friday the 13th Part 2…that would have been interesting. This is the 11th Friday the 13th movie. You can’t just add that now because you need it.
What everyone came to see in Freddy vs. Jason was, unsurprisingly, Freddy vs. Jason. We see them battle on both the dream front and in the real world. Freddy is overpowered in the dreamscape, obviously…so Lori finds a way to bring him into the real world. There, the two go to town in a bloody, violent battle to the death. It’s cartoonish on both fronts…but it is fun to watch. It does cop out on a decisive winner in the end…not wanting to alienate either fanbase. Not that it would have made much difference. The only future adventures these two characters have had in the last two decades were in remakes.
Freddy vs. Jason was a true end of an era for two 80s slasher movie titans. What makes the whole thing so odd is that it takes place in a different era than their primes. Even though they were, at the time, owned by the same studio…it took over a decade to get made and then never saw a follow up despite great success. The movie horror fans waited so long for now stands as a curious one off. The end of original era stories for both characters…coming when they were well past their peaks. It’s not a great Freddy movie. It’s not a great Jason movie. As a standalone slasher showdown however…it is fun. You almost have to consider that a major upset.
Scare Value
The hardest thing that a Freddy/Jason crossover was going to face is that the two franchises don’t feel like each other. Freddy vs. Jason settles this by trying to feel like neither. It helps the movie stand apart from both series, but it feels very dated (without feeling classic) in retrospect. This would be the last time Robert Englund would play Freddy on film…so it has some historical significance. Mostly, however, it remains what it was always intended to be: Fun.
3/5
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