This isn't my usual style of horror. But what drew me to this film was the premise. It may sound like the most cliche' thing in the world, but have you ever actually seen two slasher icons throw-down before? There were films like "Dracula Vs. The Wolfman," or "Frankenstein vs. The Mummy," but films like that stopped being made fifty years ago, before slasher icons even existed. And yeah we have films like Alien Vs. Predator, but those are more animalistic battles, Freddy Vs. Jason is a fight between two sentient entities of pure evil. Even if it's been done before in some b-movies I've never seen, I can guarantee it's never been done with any bigger slasher icons than these, because these are the two biggest slasher icons of them all.
If you go into a film like "Freddy Vs. Jason" expecting a cinematic masterpiece, you're being rather silly, aren't you? The original A Nightmare on Elm Street is probably the only film out of the 20 or so films associated with either franchise that would be considered a masterpiece by the critics' reckonings. And while the Friday the 13th series is an undeniable horror classic, by "Jason X" not even the most hardcore Voorhees fans would be calling this high brow stuff. And Freddy Vs. Jason came after that.
With that in mind, I thought the plot here was very well done. The people around Elm Street have figured out how to defeat Freddy Krueger -- they stop talking about him, stop acknowledging him, and over time the memory of him fades away. If kids don't fear him, he can't inhabit their dreams.
So Freddy taps Jason Voorhees to do his dirty work. Freddy assumes the guise of Jason's mother and orders him to punish the teenagers of Elm Street. When bodies start turning up, the memory of Freddy is rekindled and he starts to gain power again. But things run afoul between our demonic duo when Jason refuses to stop killing and starts robbing Freddy of victims he wanted for himself. Then the ultimate slasher showdown begins.
The film wasn't brilliantly written, but it was competent, it was well shot, and it was entertaining. The characters were stock archetypes, but Ginger Snaps' titular Katharine Isabelle did get to play an uber-cool tomboy, more beautiful now that she's not competing with the gorgeous Emily Perkins (hey, don't judge me... Perkins is four years older than her in-film older sister and was 23 even in the first Ginger Snaps! She's more than ten years my senior.)
All in all, Freddy Vs. Jason will obviously never rise to my favorites list, but I enjoyed it. In fact, out of the handful of mediocre teen scream flicks I've watched, I enjoyed this one more than any others (such as Wild Country, the Night of the Demons remake, Grizzly Park...). Though that may be because the premise was more original in this one.
The only thing I strongly disliked about this movie is that it portrayed Jason as the hero and Freddy as the villain. I mean, really here?? There's no 'lesser of two evils' between these two monsters. You could argue that Freddy is worse because he killed children before he died. But, then you should consider the fact that Jason has ten original continuity films, while Freddy only has six. So even while Jason isn't the killer in all of his films, he's still probably killed a much larger number of people than Freddy has. Why does this film have to have a good guy and a bad guy?
I don't mind that the teenagers themselves are rooting for Jason. They're operating under the hilariously optimistic belief that if Jason wins, they can return him to Crystal Lake and he won't have any reason to kill people anymore (as if he ever needed a reason!), but if Freddy wins, he'll merely continue his revenge on the denizens of Elm Street. So misguided though they are, I understand why they're trying to help Jason. What irks me is that the film itself is portraying Jason as the good guy, e.g. by playing triumphant music while he's winning the fight, and evil music when Freddy has the upper-hand.
Me personally, I was rooting for Freddy, because I think he's much cooler. The fact that this is the original Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund, in this film insures that the performance is tops. Jason is a very intimidating beast of a man but he just can't stand up to the iconic Krueger.
If they were ever to make a sequel, I would go see it in theaters. What greater praise is there than that?
