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bluemeanie
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Posted: October 21, 2005 at 8:14pm
I had been waiting on these guys to do battle since I was a kid, and the pay-off was enjoyable as hell. I don't care how bad it actually was, I still enjoyed the hell out of it -- when Freddy and Jason start doing battle, I am smiling and laughing and like I am 10-years-old again. 7/10.
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Chad
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Posted: March 26, 2006 at 12:00am
In this showdown for the ages, we kick things off with the revelation that all of the fine, upstanding citizens of Elm Street have forgotten about Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund, as always). Yes, the adults of the town have sent all of the teenagers who have heard of him to a mental institution, where they are heavily medicated with an experimental drug known as Hypnocil that will prevent them from dreaming. After all, if the remaining teens don't know about Freddy, and as such, don't give him the fear that he requires to continue his murderous ways... well, that pretty much defeats him, right?
Freddy realizes this, and sets out to remedy the pickle that he finds himself in by resurrecting Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) from the grave with the intent of sending him to Elm Street to murder a few kids. The plan, as Freddy spells it out, revolves around Jason butchering a couple of citizens, which will bring back the memories of Freddy, which will once again give him that fear, and in turn, allow him to resume picking off these young adults. The problem with this plan is that Jason takes too many of Freddy's intended victims, so in the closing moments of the film, we finally receive the promised Freddy vs. Jason showdown. Moving the story along from the human side of things, we have Lori Campbell (Monica Keena) as the star of the film, along with her just-escaped-from-the-institution boyfriend Will Rollins (Jason Ritter) and her friends Kia Waterson (Kelly Rowland) and Gibb (Katharine Isabelle).
Any horror fan that was around during the peak of the Friday The 13th / Nightmare On Elm Street series should know how eagerly anticipated this film was. Regardless of which franchise you enjoyed more, the question of "Who would win if...?" never failed to come up when discussing the films with other fans. The idea for finally creating this movie has been around since at least 1989, and after countless battles over the rights, numerous rejected scripts, and years of waiting by the fans, the summer of 2003 finally brought us the film that we'd been waiting for. It's a shame that after all of those legal battles and after all of the waiting, the end result wasn't worth it.
Let me back up a bit. The movie was enjoyable to a certain extent, sure; after all, there are a couple of nasty kills that are worthy of appearing in the better films from either series (although Jason is responsible for all but one of said kills), and the final battle is admittedly pretty neat. The problem I had with this film was that it was titled Freddy Vs. Jason, yet this battle between them was jammed into the last ten minutes of the film as almost an afterthought. The real meat of the film is the battle between the teenagers and the icons, and since Jason is responsible for nearly all of the carnage, it felt more like a Friday The 13th film than the showdown that I'd been waiting for.
Then, when we finally get the battle that we've been waiting for, it turns out to be a huge letdown. Set to nerve-grating nu metal music, it plays out more like a super-hero film than a showdown between horror icons. Jason picks up Freddy, throws him thirty feet in the air (an effect that he had previously done against a handful of humans), and Freddy reacts by throwing a three-ton hunk of steel at Jason. I realize that asking for some realism from a film that features a serial killer that kills you in your sleep fighting a zombified mass-murderer is a bit silly, but this battle just went overboard. To avoid spoiling the movie (although I'm sure that anyone remotely interested has seen it by now), I won't say exactly how it ends; I will say, however, that I was extremely disappointed by the "stalemate" finish. I'm not even going to get into how much I hated that Jason was made out to be a pansy in this battle and was basically Freddy's bitch for ninety percent of it, so I'll leave this paragraph at that.
I realize that the movie couldn't feature the two fighting for ninety minutes, so I'm alright with the decision to include a storyline featuring teenagers. After all, both villains made their name by hacking these teens to death, so it's not exactly a far-fetched idea to throw some in here. All I wanted was for the battle to be the highlight of the film, not squeezed into the final minutes of the film as if the director forgot about it until the last possible moment. I'd also have been happier with this film had both of the "stars" been treated equally in terms of their power against one another. Jason gets his ass handed to him in Freddy's dream-world, which is understandable... but then, when it moves to the real world (at Camp Crystal Lake, no less), Freddy continues onwards with the ass-handing. Admittedly, I'm more of a fan of Jason than Freddy, but even if it was the other way around, I'd be saying the same thing right now.
Hollywood: if you do decide to make Freddy Vs. Jason 2 or Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. <Somebody>, take a good, long look at this film to see how not to do it. Find yourselves a director that doesn't try to turn two horror franchises into a comic-book series, keep things equal, and for God's sake, get Kane Hodder back behind that hockey-mask. Jason is a killing machine, not a "tortured soul", and he certainly didn't need "eyes that show emotion." Ken Kirzinger as Jason is about as scary as my grandmother, and while I will give him his due as an actor, he should never be allowed near a camera in the Jason get-up again. There's a few neat scenes to be found in the movie, but overall, it's a colossal letdown. 4/10.
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bluemeanie
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Posted: March 27, 2006 at 3:40pm
You know -- I liked this film a lot -- more than I thought I would. It's just cheesy fun from beginning to end and when Freddy and Jason start tearing at one another, the little kid in me was googly eyed and soaking up every second of it. I thought this was far better than it could have been and sincerely hope they continue this whole 'vs' thing a couple of more films. 8/10.
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Strait Killa
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Posted: March 29, 2006 at 8:26pm
When Freddy looks at the black girl and says, "hmmm, dark meat," I almost died laughing. That quote alone made this movie worth watching
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grain of sand
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Posted: January 23, 2007 at 5:55pm
there was a teenage party movie that came out early nineties or so, it coulda been an off 'national lampoon' movie, the washington d.c. on or something where they make a bunch of sexual jokes abouit monuments and party blah blah, but some stoner kids are discussing this battle long before this movie was made and the stoner kid says 'well of course jason would win because.. like.. freddy can only kill you in your dreams.. and you know jason doesn't sleep'
ever since I saw that horrible movie, something like 6th grade I've always wondered what the actual outcome would be. so I waited and waited and thought and thought, so when this came out I was pretty excited.
I saw it in theatres the day it came out and loved every second of it, the kills were cool and graphic and was everything I expected, minus the jason being a big pussy thing.. but I really liked how he was as tough as he was when it came to taking all those impalements.
this was a good movie, and I routed for jason, because he's fuckin brutal and.. jason doesn't make corny jokes.....
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Crispy
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Posted: January 25, 2007 at 11:05am
Haha, it's rare when I agree with bluemeanie's opinion over MvMMDI's, but there it is. Personally, and I know this is even too "stupid" for Hollywood to consider I would be first in line if they made Jason Vs. Predator. In fact, a while ago me and a few friends of mine were discussing a possible plot line.
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Tristan
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Posted: June 24, 2007 at 12:03am
I have watched this more than any film in either series, and I still find that it's the most fun out of all of them. From beginning to end it's exactly what I thought it would be, and it's every horror fan's wet dream come true. 9/10
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Shakes
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Posted: January 20, 2009 at 10:32am
I, too, remember waiting years for this to be released. Hints of nostalgia, sure. but I loved this flick. There are some excellent death scenes and the cheese factor is leveled nicely, with Krueger's jokes, mainly. 7/10 all around
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Rest Easy Soul
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Posted: January 24, 2010 at 8:32pm
Awesome yet average.
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