I wonder if anyone at New Line thought – before they set out to make Freddy vs. Jason – that there was a problem with the whole concept of facing off two horror movie icons against each other. The problem? If there are two bad guys doing battle, particularly if these are villains who have already proven to be virtually indestructible, where is the suspense? Where is the horror? Don’t horror movies depend on innocent, fearful victims being sliced and diced by the murderous bad guys? Doesn’t a confrontation between two monsters kind of lose the key aspects of horror?
Perhaps someone did ask these questions. If so, that would explain why the confrontation promised by the title of this film doesn’t really begin until well after its half-way point. The problem with this approach, though, is that we’re forced to sit through a pretty mundane series of cut and slash scenes while awaiting the big confrontation, and then when we get it, it’s something of an anti-climax. Yes, it’s kind of fun to see Freddy Krueger, the burnt-faced, blade-fingered Elm Street slasher, pulling Jason Vorhees, the hockey-masked, machete wielding summer campy killer, into service to help Freddy regain his powers. You see, Freddy’s strength comes from the fear of those he pursues. But since his last rampage four years earlier, the townsfolk have been smart – they sent away everyone who knew about Freddy, thereby ridding the town of fear and inoculating themselves against another Freddy attack. That’s why Jason has dropped by; Freddy figures that Jason-inspired terror will give him a Viagra-like boost and allow him to get back into business.
As the two killers begin to reassert themselves, the local populace is confused. The youngsters don’t know what’s going on (“That goalie was pissed about something,” says one teen after one of Jason’s initial slashfests), and the adults don’t understand how their perfect plan can be falling apart. Some of these scenes are pretty good, with standard horror movie killings and some hilarious hallucinations by young people who get their first glimpses of Freddy in their dreams. None of this is spectacular, but it’s at least passable horror fare.
Things get off track once Freddy and Jason start fighting over the privilege of being first in line to kill the locals. How thrilling can it be to watch Jason lop off Freddy’s arm, only to have it grow right back? Freddy impales Jason with rebar, and again, moments later, the victim is back fighting at full throttle. Pretty boring stuff, actually. And while we’re supposed to be cheering for the teens who have set up the confrontation between Freddy and Jason in order to take the heat off the locals, this all seems rather nonsensical, as it’s already clear that neither monster can be killed – at least not for long.
So, here’s a movie caught in its own Catch-22. The horrific indestructibility of Jason and Freddy is a big part of what makes them so scary, but it’s also what makes a fight between them pointless. As a result, it’s not what happens onscreen that matters so much as how they carry it out. If the fighting and maiming and killing is original enough, then maybe we can overlook the pointlessness of it all. Unfortunately, what we see here in Freddy vs. Jason just isn’t thrilling in enough by that measure. Like the later chapters in both of these seemingly endless movie series, it all seems just a bit too familiar and a bit too obvious as to what’s coming next.
Like the later chapters in both of these seemingly endless movie series, it all seems just a bit too familiar and a bit too obvious as to what’s coming next.- Brian Webster
