Freddy vs. Jason

• Directed by Ronny Yu
• August 15, 2003
• Based on characters created by Wes Craven and Victor Miller

Weakened and nearly forgotten, Freddy resurrects Jason to cause fear only to lose control of the killer forcing him to take direct action.

For me Freddy vs. Jason was an epic crossover decades in the making. As a concept I still rank it higher than any of the Avengers films. It was something just about every fan of 80s horror wanted to see-one or more of the horror icons of the day meeting up and doing battle. Nobody necessarily cared if it made sense. For me I can see a thread from the old Universal monster movies to this. At least it was birthed in that same vein.

This establishes that the tormented town of Springwood is not that far from the cursed Camp Crystal Lake. I remember a joke that went around as a kid amongst my friends that you would hate to be the town between Springwood and Crystal Lake. Turns out there isn’t one and they are just a lot closer than anybody would be comfortable with! Yikers!

Ronny Yu and pals don’t try to reinvent the wheel or the horror formula of the era. The characters are a bunch of horny teens with one that experienced some serious personal tragedy as is often the case. There are copious amounts of blood and stupidity on the part of a few characters that keep the kills and story moving. Ultimately the characters are stock characters that you either find likeable or irritating enough that their kills are enjoyable. Pretty much your basic 80s horror movie set up.

Freddy (Robert Englund because there is no other viable choice) is desperate to make it back in the kids’ dreams having been largely forgotten via extreme measures taken by the town of Springwood. I’m not sure exactly how searching the bowels of hell to enlist Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) accomplishes that but it does.

There have been some complaints about changes to the mythology such as Jason fearing water having previously attacked victims from under the water. I won’t disregard them. However, I was interested in the kills more than strict adherence to mythology. It is close enough that nothing was severely contradicted with either character’s universe. Nothing too jarring.

I think they do a little more digging into the A Nightmare on Elm Street mythology than they do with the Friday the 13^th mythology. For example central to Springwood’s efforts to forget Freddy is the use of Hypnocil which was first introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. It is a fictional drug used to suppress dreams. I cannot think of any deep callbacks to the Friday series though I could have missed them.

The film also delves into the parents being well aware of Freddy and what he does which was alluded to more and more as the Elm Street films went on. When we get here though is probably the strongest example of that. Considering everything that happened at the camp easily within an evening’s driving distance that they are unaware of Jason kind of bothers me. Were they that wrapped up in their own problems that the story of another menacing killer was completely missed? 

Freddy as done by Robert Englund (Jackie Earle Haley was nowhere near as good) engages in the macabre jokes and dark one-liners the character became synonymous with. He even uses one that probably wouldn’t make the cut today that I won’t repeat here. Maybe a little sexist or even racist like the Rolling Stones song Brown Sugar. The Freddy you get here is the Freddy you would get in the original films. Ronny Yu uses CGI to do a very Freddy thing in a confrontation between Freddy and Jason that could only be done with CGI. As a whole the CGI really ups the reality warping the character often did via dreams.

Jason is just a brutal force of unbridled destruction that kills with one swipe. In that he is very much the Jason you are familiar with. His moments feel less distinct than Freddy’s do. There’s just something not as Friday the 13^th about his scenes. Maybe that is because I watched his movies much less than the Nightmare films.

I think an unusually impactful moment for the movie or even the genre was the final scene between the largely superficial Kia (Kelly Rowland) and Charlie (Chris Marquette). I think it should been developed as a reluctant romance rather than the antagonism we got. The conclusion worked but there would have been so much more punch. His death scene is kind of heartbreaking.

Lori Campbell (Monica Keena) and Will Rollins (Jason Ritter) despite being our central couple are not nearly as good. Will and his friend Mark (Brendan Fletcher) who have been institutionalized in Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital (also from Dream Warriors) for dreaming of Freddy. They escape and let the rest of the cast in on what is going on. The town is quarantining everybody like they are stopping a disease.

I found Freddy vs. Jason fun. Maybe not frightening but more of a monster battle in the spirit of the old Universal mash ups. I think this will satisfy anyone who like the two icons featured.