I’m eight days into the project, but I think my mind is already so overwhelmed by the Freddy Krueger universe that I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for Freddy vs. Jason. Maybe it’s because New Nightmare seemed to offer such a perfect conclusion to the saga. Perhaps my expectations were raised by people whose opinions I respect (including my colleague Alex Vo, who reviewed the movie in his Friday the 13th watching series). But it’s still a letdown, one that promises an epic, apocalyptic battle between two horror icons but gets bogged down in too many dull characters and head-slapping lapses in logic.
As the movie begins, Freddy’s in Hell, and he’s bored. Everyone seems to have forgotten him. So he decides to invade the psyche of Jason Voorhees, who will become the fall guy for his latest campaign of terror on Springwood. However, when Jason starts to get the credit for the slaughter of various (and interchangeable) teens, Freddy gets jealous, and decides to take over where his hockey-masked rival left off — preferably with Jason out of the picture. Said interchangeable teens learn of strange goings-on within the town mental hospital: it turns out that everyone who had a nocturnal meeting with Freddy was hospitalized against their will and prescribed an experimental drug to stifle their dreams.
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For about 45 minutes or so, Freddy Vs. Jason goes through the motions — people turn up dead, nothing is as it seems, the actors look way too old to play teenagers, and so on. Then, two things happen in relatively rapid succession that knocks the movie off its axis, never to return.
Our heroes infiltrate the mental hospital in order to obtain drugs that will keep them from dreaming. Once they’re inside, the stoner guy in their party decides to light up a doobie. Doesn’t this clown know that in horror movies, “immoral” behavior will result in death? Heck, in real life, would any idiot act this way? Let’s say you’ve just broken into a dangerous place, and your mission is a matter of life and death. Would anyone just blaze away? I know, I know: horror movies are filled with characters acting stupidly — walking into dark places alone, not taking the killer seriously, saying “I’ll be right back,” etc. But this strikes me as so monumentally stupid that whatever minimal concern I had for the protagonists’ well-being was gone. And anyway, why should we care about these kids? Why make the story about them? Don’t we want to see Freddy and Jason duke it out?
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The second problem is much bigger. Our protagonists manage to drag an unconscious Jason into a van with the intention of returning him to Camp Crystal Lake. So that means the camp is within driving distance of Springwood. Really? Really? So all these years, there were two brutal killers terrorizing teenagers within a 100-mile radius or so and no one thought to mention it before? Is Springwood the North Korea of Midwestern communities? Is its citizenry privy to any outside information? How stupid and ill-informed is this town? And more to the point, couldn’t the filmmakers have come up with a more imaginative — or plausible — way of setting the stage for Freddy and Jason’s final showdown?
It may seem like I’m nitpicking. However, even within the trappings of the genre, it’s essential that horror movies follow certain rules to maintain some semblance of internal believability. Once those rules are breached, it’s really hard for the audience to stay onboard.
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All this being said, that final battle is pretty impressive; to quote AC/DC, if you want blood, you’ve got it. Freddy and Jason go at each other with gusto, tearing at each other amidst what seems like a cauldron of fire. All this flesh-ripping and limb hacking may not be for the squeamish, but give it credit: it’s got plenty of energy.
Watching Freddy Vs. Jason, I felt grateful for my particular assignment, because Freddy’s much better company than Jason. Freddy may be a bad standup comedian, and he may be repulsive to look at, but he’s got some semblance of a personality. And even if the rules governing Freddy’s universe are stretched, they’re still reasonably well-defined. I’ve seen only bits and pieces of the Friday the 13th movies through the years, and Freddy Vs. Jason doesn’t exactly whet my appetite for more. Freddy Vs. Jason is not completely terrible — it’s no worse than some of the duller Nightmare sequels. But it’s pretty generic stuff.
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Tomorrow, we’ll reach the end of our series with the brand new Nightmare on Elm Street. Will it mark a bold new direction for the franchise?
Schedule of Nightmares:
