Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

To be honest, this film could possibly be the culmination of a good portion of my childhood cinematic experiences. My fondest TV memories for as long as my brain can stretch back were catching the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies on USA or TBS during the summer, as well as re- and re- watching the few Nightmare on Elm Street tapes my older brother had. My heart and mind were always with Freddy Krueger (as any visitor to this site can tell just by looking at the fact that I've reviewed every Nightmare... movie...even New Nightmare!), whose arsenal of bad one-liners and character-appropriate deaths were always more entertaining to me than Jason's array of garden tools. But who among us can have absolutely no affection for a relentless, silent butcher of camp counselors? You'd have to have a heart of stone, I say. So, to people like me who grew up with visions of slaughtered teens dancing 'round our heads, a Freddy vs. Jason movie, like any big crossover for any fandom, should be an event. Badly enough, this comes not only about two decades after both franchises have jumped the shark, but at the wrong end of the slasher genre's Scream-spawned renaissance. Also it's been about ten years since the last Nightmare on Elm Street movie, New Nightmare, which probably had about ten minutes of Freddy himself. Unless you count Jason X (and no one would blame you if you didn't), it had been eleven years since the last Friday the 13th flick, Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, the film that ended weirdly with a teaser for a "Jason and Freddy" movie in the first place (although allegedly this was just a throwaway gag).

We begin our epic with a glimpse of Krueger's origin story and his fiery death at the hands of an angry mob, through the narration of Freddy himself (fortunately he yadda yaddas the whole DreamMasterRapedNunOneThousandManiacsGreekDreamDemon s thing from the previous movies). From his monologue we learn Freddy can only kill as long as his legend is remembered (in other words, our scriptwriters had Candyman in mind). Freddy doesn't stop to point out that this doesn't quite jibe with the fact that most of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies started with people oblivious to who Freddy Krueger was and what he did, so it wasn't like he was much of even an urban legend, in the town, but we're not here to consider such things, we're here to see unlikable teens die!

Within minutes the movie then reminds us what the other thing the audience wants us to see, cleavage About five minutes of the opening credits, we turn from Freddy and go to Crystal Lake where a camp counselor flashes the camera as she prepares to do some midnight skinny dipping with an unseen boyfriend (so at least we know that the scriptwriters know their audience). Naturally, it isn't long until she ends up on the wrong end of a machette (hey, I don't get paid for this, so I can repeat phrases if I want to) but, suddenly, it turns out this is a Freddy-induced dream. Freddy, in the guise of an aged and maternal Mrs. Vorhees, appears and orders Freddy to go to Elm Street and kill because the teenagers there have been 'naughty.' Our man Fred's plan hinges on the fact that Vorhees' superhuman massacre will make the kids believe in the legend of Freddy again, thus bringing him back to full power.

As far as crossover premises go, it's not too bad an idea, aside from the sudden retcon that Freddy's existence depends on how many people believe in him and fear him, but both the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises have never shed any tears for lost continuity (and, if you really care about this kind of thing, no mention is ever made of either Freddy's Dead or Jason Goes To Hell; in fact, the movie not only ignores, but supercedes, events in the former). The movie also requires the audience to buy into the fact that Springwood (the town Elm Street is in) and Crystal Lake are only an hour's drive at most away from each other, which really gives you interesting ideas about what life in that county must be like. At least the local newspaper reporters have something to do on a regular basis.

Like I said, though, it’s a very workable plot: Jason and Freddy go after the same pool of victims and eventually fight over the leftovers. Most crossovers involving two heroes or two different sets of heroes inevitably go by the formula of competition followed by cooperation (it’s a formula readers of superhero comics know by heart). Reversing the formula to deal with two notorious villains isn’t too bad a concept at all. Unfortunately, when it came to the actual victims, the movie makers have called on Scream to be their blueprints. Like nearly every horror movie made in recent years, Jason vs. Freddy strives to wink at the audience every five seconds. With a project like this, some of that’s to be expected, but when you have two characters whose defining characteristics are either heavy smoking or pot-use (of course, they die), then you have to wonder if anyone’s really trying to be clever.

After we leave Freddy and Jason, we finally meet our selection of victims, who are holding a small impromptu (and crappy) party. From the start, we know the protagonist Lori (get it?) will be the Final Girl, because she spends a bucket full of dialogue pining after her lost boyfriend Will, who suddenly disappeared years ago mand rejects the offer of a one-night stand, despite the urgings of her best friend Kia (who is played by Kelly Rowland, so she shall be called Destiny’s Child: Second in Command, because it amuses me to do so). Kia…pardon, DC: SIC...we know will live for some time, because she has no obvious vices, but she’s immediately marked for death by suggesting that the Final Girl sleep with a stranger. As for their friends, Gibb, whose only personality trait is that she almost always has a cigarrette in her mouth; her boyfriend, who is such an asshole that you can’t only not believe that he’s dating, but that no one has killed him already; and his friend, Some Guy, who eagerly anticipates sex from the Final Girl (but doesn’t get even a flirt), well, you know right away they’re all doomed.

Part of the fun of any decent slasher flick is figuring out, based on the rules of the genre, who dies and how soon it will take. Such little things have always been a great way to get maximum enjoyment out of genres that have plot cliches as their lifeblood (like, say, ‘80s teen sex comedies or Norrisian action flicks) but, unfortunately, like so many slasher films in the post-Scream mold, Freddy Vs. Jason tries to drown its audience with self-aware references. You’d expect a good deal of slipping references and in-jokes in a movie like this…hell, that’s why many people would see it…but most of the self-referencing the movie does here is quite dull: yes, we know sex is important, and yes, we know the cliches of the slasher film and, yes, we know we actually morbidly enjoy watching these kids die. Like Scream, the film urges you not to take it seriously, that it is nothing more than a ‘mere’ horror film, but it refuses to embrace the campy nature of its ‘protagonists.’ In fact, the problem is that, if anything, Freddy vs. Jason is disappointingly straightforward.

The violence is gratifyingly cartoonish, at least: the first victim, who to no one’s surprise, turns out to be Gibb's uber-asshole boyfriend, is killed by Jason right after he has sex with Gibb. As Will lies on the bed and Gibb is in the bathroom showering, Jason stabs him vigorously with his machete (which, frustratingly, remains his only weapon through out the entire movie). Then, for the coup de gras, Jason bends the bed inward, snapping Victim #1 like a twig. Naturally Gibb doesn’t hear any of this even though she’s in a bathroom directly adjacent to the bedroom, and Jason, who’s quickly satisfied for an immortal killing machine, slips away, allowing the teens in the house to panic and flee without further bloodshed. At least the movie is consistent with Jason's well documented Transport Whenever Convenient For The Plot Ability.

In a surprising twist, the teens actually go to the police who, in a not so surprising twist, ignore their hysteria. (While on the subject, anyone notice that the police station is oddly ultramodern for a small town?) The Chief of Police seems slightly disturbed, but when rookie cop Scott Stubbs mentions possibility that Jason Vorhees – the ‘Crystal Lake’ killer – could be responsible, he’s shouted down. Unfortunately, that same moment Final Girl has a nightmare warning her about Freddy’s return. After the kids are sent home, the guy who tried to get into Final Girl’s pants has a dream where Freddy tries to kill him in a scene exactly like his pursuit of Tina in the original Nightmare…. Unfortunately, Freddy is not quite strong enough, so his claws pass through Some Guy harmlessly, causing him to exclaim, “I’m okay!” in a hilarious moment of unnecessary dialogue that would make Stan Lee proud. Double unfortunately, he wakes up to find that his father, who is simply sitting next to him, was decapitated and now Jason stands over him and his father’s corpse with his trusty machete in hand. How Jason ever got the patience to decapitate Some Guy's father, drag dad’s corpse to where FHM is napping, placing the corpse right next to him, and – without waking Some Guy, mind you - balancing the head just so back on the body, I don’t know, but it is refreshing to see that he’s developed a sense of humor over the long years.

Soon we learn exactly how Freddy was supposedly forgotten among the town’s youth: all the kids who have seen Freddy kill have been cooped up in one mental institution, where they are basically ‘quarantined’ away from their peers who never heard about Freddy. In a way, it’s sort of a solid concept, although not nearly as clever or as interesting as the “Freddy eventually did kill off every teen, adolescent and child in Springwood, then the adults went insane” idea in Freddy’s Dead. I guess it’s supposed to be a continuation of the premise of Nightmare…3, where the survivors were consigned to a mental hospital, but simply because Freddy’s attacks on them were mistakenly thought to be suicide attempts. But the film just uses the hospital as a brief plot point and doesn’t really go into any detail of how the hospital came about or what is done with the patients there. You’d think, being the friends and relatives of people slaughtered out of the blue by an invincible dream-demon, they would be a little bit mad, but the two patients we meet – Will (yes, Final Girl’s long lost love blah blah) and Mark (who is both the Randy and the Odious Comic Relief…ack!) – are fairly well adjusted, although Mark still has frequent flashbacks to his brother’s death at Freddy’s hands and does seem to be a little disturbed when the script remembers to make him so.

Anyway, with absurd ease, Will and Mark escape after hearing about the murders committed by Jason to warn Final Girl about Freddy’s existence. Which they see fit to do by confronting Final Girl in the middle of the day in the crowded high school in between class periods. But when the principal and a couple of cops pop up to drag Will and Mark back to the asylum, they act completely surprised. Luckily, they manage to escape to Mark's late brother's van (!), which really does bring to mind the Mystery Machine. Hopefully that was intentional.

There's unfortunately more 'plot' before we finally get to the actual Jason versus Freddy action. Despite all the brutal murders, the gang, at the insistence of a lesser version of Jay (as in 'Jay and Silent Bob'), show up at a rave held in a cornfield. Yes, here is where the filmmakers reach out to the youth audience and demonstrate how well they can pump the street jive, for shizzle, and, yes, it does bring to mind more than a couple of scenes from the MST3K classic Catalina Caper. We're treated to a few artsy shots of teens hopping around waving glo-sticks. If they were seeking to depict a social event that could only be enjoyed through heavy drug use, they more than succeeded. Anyway, even with both the indestructible serial killer and the dream stalking murderer around, Gibb prepares to submit to the inescapable rules of the slasher genre by getting drunk (to be fair, it's hinted that she probably had a mikey slipped to her). Because you just don't see enough of this kind of thing, a Billy Idol lookalike covered with glo-light bracelets (no, really) begins to make the moves on our unconscious victim, who is in the meantime getting stalked by Freddy in the infamous boiler room. Jason answers our prayers and slaughters Billy Idol (fortunately, he doesn't get too far) and Gibb before Freddy can deal the fatal blow. Furious that Jason got to his victim first, Freddy declares war against his fellow supernatural serial killer...

There's more, including a barely fleshed out and ultimately inconsequential sub-plot involving the possibility of Final Girl's father being a mad scientist of sorts, but fortunately the movie does eventually deliver on its promise with not one, but two extended fights between the two franchise villains. Unfortunately, while the fights themselves are more enjoyable than I had expected with Robert England's Freddy working against what could be the ultimate straight man, the movie just stacks up badly compared to the campy, kinetic Freddy's Dead. While Freddy vs. Jason can never be accused of taking itself seriously, it lacks a sense of fun. It's missing a sincere appreciation for the sub-cultural significance of its anti-heroes.

In parts, it feels as though it's suffering an identity crisis. There are a few minutes when it seems to be striving for straight horror - during Freddy's origin scene, there's a disturbing scene where he kills an eight-year old girl off-camera (complete with a clear sign that he did more to his victims than simply kill), and the death scene of Mark is done with a completely straight face. While the death scenes are refreshingly gratuitous, they veer too much from camp to seriousness, and none follow the 'creative' themes of the latter Nightmare... movies, nor does Jason ever employ a weapon other than the machete. Sadly, this film will probably only really serve as an interesting footnote in the long history of the two franchises, rather than as a trash culture treasure in its own right.