Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Tagline: Winner Kills All.

Curiosity: If New Nightmare asserted that Freddy Krueger was akin to old fairytales, then Freddy vs. Jason must be the argument for his relevance to the old Universal Monsters line.

Plot: Set but a mere two years after Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, the town of Springwood, Ohio has rebuilt the population nicely. The adults of the town have effectively put a quarantine on Freddy – kids now regularly take the Hypnocil drug featured in The Dream Warrior to block dreams and, therefore, Freddy. Any kids who learn anything about him are shipped off to the Westin Hills psychiatric ward and cut off from the population. Without any horny youths to prey upon, Freddy is effectively cut out and loosing power fast. Condemned to hell, Krueger reaches out to Jason, the hulking spirit of misplaced vengeance from the Friday the 13th franchise, to kill in his name. But when that only makes peope afraid of Jason, Freddy decides to take the big lug down for cutting into his territory.

Also there are some snooping kids involved.

Thoughts: Having just watched the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series in order, I have to say, Freddy vs. Jason isn’t too bad, even though the film kind of waffles the fight by establishing that each character is king of his domain – Freddy rules the dream world; Jason rules the physical realm. Still, director Ronny Yu shows some reverence for the Nightmare series, effectively employing imagery from the first and third films. It’s harder to get much out of the Friday the 13th series – that franchise pretty much just evolved to exploit whatever was popular, from Halloween’s looming, shadowy killer to, well, Nightmare on Elm Street’s mystical elements, although it is cool to see Paula Shaw return as Pamela Voorhees, Jason’s mother.

The cast here gets more to do than most Nightmare teens. Even David Kopp, who plays the misogynistic manly man Blake that bites it early in the film, gets to fire off a few hilarious lines. Not everyone works – Destiny’s Child’s Kelly Rowland seems eternally lost in her scenes, and I just don't care about any of the stoner characters – but there’s enough wackiness and kitsch to sell the movie. That said, when you get down to the actual fighting between the two title villains, all we get is a glorified wrestling match. Aliens vs. Predator, for all its problems, at least had a truly great battle between two franchises.

Reflection: Welp, it looks like the nightmare is finally over…