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FREDDY VS
JASON REVIEWS
SLASHER SHOWDOWN SURVIVES CONTRIVANCE
But, save the scenes that really are 'Freddy vs. Jason,' this
horror franchise merger is mostly the same old crap
Directed by Ronny Yu
Starring Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Monica Keena, Jason
Ritter, Kelly Rowland, James Callahan, Katherine Isabelle,
Lochlyn Munro, Chris Marquette, Brendan Fletcher, Odessa Munroe
For the first time since "Scream," the slasher genre
shows signs of life (was that in poor taste?) in "Freddy vs.
Jason," a franchise merger that pits hockey-masked psycho
Jason Voorhees from the "Friday the 13th" movies
against "A Nightmare on Elm Street's" dream-invading
bimbo-killer Freddy Krueger and his knife-blade glove.
The scenes in which these two unstoppable supernatural slayers
are literally at each other's throats prove to be everything fans
of such movies could hope for as they hack, cut, beat, tear and
toss each other around, first in Freddy's dream realm (where the
burn-scarred nutcase has tapped into Jason's subconscious), and
later on Jason's home turf at Camp Crystal Lake after Freddy has
been drawn into the real world. Their super-violent showdowns are
like John Woo fight scenes with all the elegance sucked out and
replaced with brutal fury.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is largely the same tired
old crap -- 25-year-old half-talents playing unconvincing high-schoolers
stalked through the dark by one or the other of our killers. Any
bouts of creativity in the script are almost immediately
squelched by low standards of hack filmmaking, as evidenced by
the boring expository prologue in which Krueger (Robert Englund)
blabs on and on about his backstory, then explains the plot: He's
awakened Jason (Ken Kirzinger) from the dead by invading his
psyche (as a vision of his abusive mother), sending him to Elm
Street to rekindle the fear Freddy needs to thrive in the dreams
of his hometown teenagers and begin anew his own killing streak.
For the movie's first 30 minutes, all that's new are the
actresses' almost ubiquitous breast implants as they go through
the horror movie paces of having easy sex, taking showers,
hearing scary noises, discovering their boyfriends' mutilated
corpses, seeing Jason, running through the night in wet T-shirts,
tripping on something so Jason can catch up, then getting gutted
as Karo syrup and red dye No. 5 splatter across the screen. Even
before the opening credits, the movie is knee-deep in clichés.
"Freddy vs. Jason" only begins to get interesting when
the kids who survived Act One realize the town has participated
in a huge cover-up of old Elm Street murders and fed its children
dream-suppressant drugs to keep them from ever even knowing the
name of Freddy Krueger. But with that cat out of the bag, there's
no escape. As the cast gets tired running from Jason, they know
Freddy's waiting for them in their sleep.
But even when handed this golden B-movie premise and several
interesting twists (all the kids who knew about Freddy are locked
up in an asylum where Jason pays a visit), director Ronnie Yu
("Bride of Chucky") stubbornly refuses to steer away
from formula or patch up plot holes. The underlying and all too
correct assumption that most slasher flick fans have low
standards still runs rampant in Hollywood, and I guess the
thinking goes, why waste originality on those who won't
appreciate it?
So Yu cranks up the heavy metal soundtrack and his killers cut
loose, as the inevitable virginal heroine (Monica Keena, "Dawson's
Creek") and her dwindling number of friends seek a way to
stop them -- often with unintentionally laugh-inducing lines of
dialogue like, "Wait! Freddy died by fire, Jason by water!
How can we use that?"
The two franchise anti-heroes are finally pitted against each
other when Jason gets off his leash and starts killing too many
victims before Freddy has a chance to slay them in their slumber.
How Jason winds up in Freddy's dream domain is a surprise I won't
reveal, and how Freddy is pulled into the real world at the
summer camp where Jason's bloodlust was born is even better.
Despite being encumbered by a whole lot of ridiculously
convenient contrivance (What luck! A huge, brand new, fully-charged
propane tank at a camp abandoned 50 years ago!), the picture's
finale is a hum-dinger.
Now, why couldn't the rest of "Freddy vs. Jason" be so
entertaining?
FREDDY VS JASON REVIEWS : Reviewer: Sean O'Connell
Hockey-masked
Friday the 13th stalker Jason Voorhees and glove-toting Nightmare
on Elm Street slasher Freddy Krueger have independently
terrorized teens through a combined 17 movies. Pitting them
against each other was a no-brainer. Kind of like the movie that
finally unites them.
The long-anticipated match-up delivers all the gore, violence,
carnage, and brutality you can stomach. By disregarding
continuity, the film simultaneously honors its roots and forgets
its past. Which means Freddy Vs. Jason picks up where neither
franchise left off. Freddy (Robert Englund) still exists in the
dreams of frightened children, but the current residents of Elm
Street are being fed Hypnocil, a dream suppressant drug.
Temporarily powerless, the scarred monster recruits juggernaut
Jason (Ken Kirzinger) to infiltrate his ‘hood and start
scaring kids again. But once Freddy’s returned to power, he
can’ t get Jason to leave.
There’s just no getting around the fact that, after two
decades of decadence, these villains are pale imitations of their
former selves. Freddy’s murderous wit has been dulled, and
Jason now sports a wispy mullet. Since when did this dude have
hair? Because there are only so many ways you can dispose of
horny teens, the film’s multiple killings look painfully
bogus. Director Ronny Yu covers his mistakes with gallons of fake
blood, in hopes that his technical blunders will be ignored
– or worse, forgiven. Granted, there’s enough red juice
on screen to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but the shot of
a dad losing his head screams Lord & Taylor mannequin.
New Line’s so pleased to finally have Freddy and Jason
together that the studio neglected to cast decent actors or write
a coherent script. The Freddy cast is uniformly awful, though the
bodacious females do seem willing to shed their clothes a lot
quicker than their predecessors. Yu balances the barest
essentials from each franchise, but it becomes obvious which
nightmarish film series he admires most. And why not? The Elm
Street movies were always more inventive than the straightforward
Friday flicks, and the chilling dream sequences imagined in
Freddy are far more creepy than the Camp Crystal Lake conclusion,
mainly for the mystical way they mess with our heads.
Just be patient. Yu asks us to wade through an hour of
inconsequential plot details and frighteningly bad performances
before Mask battles Glove, but once they cut to the chase (literally)
and start brawling, we get our money’s worth. Was there a
winner? That’s for you to decide. Will there be a rematch?
That’s for New Line’s executives to decide once the box
office numbers come rolling in.
New Line rolls out the red -- and we mean blood red -- carpet for
the Freddy Vs. Jason DVD release, with two discs of gore galore.
The "jump to a death" feature (exactly what it sounds
like) is clever, and the commentary from Englund, Yu, and and
Kirzinger is worth a listen. Disc two is crammed full of deleted
scenes (including the original opening and ending) along with
countless behind-the-scenes documentaries. For horror fans it's a
real must-own.
Disrobing soon at a theater near you.
Reviewer: Sean O'Connell