Freddy vs. Jason is a kind of miracle picture. Here is a film that had every reason to fail. It was a crossover; a tricky genre at the best of time. It was the latest entry in two long-defunct franchises, both of which had long outstayed their welcome and neither of which had exactly gone out in a blaze of glory. Both of these franchises had begun at least two decades before, each operated within its own universe with its own specific rules, and both were internally contradictory to an insane degree…and now they were being brought together. By all rights this should have been an unmitigated disaster.
And yet…it isn’t. Against all odds it’s actually, well, pretty good. It’s solid, moderately intelligent, immensely satisfying, and even a little scary. Make no mistake; this is a much, much better swan song than either of these characters deserved.
We open with a brief recap of Freddy’s origin (in a nice touch, one of the parents firebombing Freddy’s house is clearly meant to be Marge Thompson) in which he establishes his ‘rules.’ From there we learn that Freddy (Robert Englund, naturally) is stuck in Hell (the minimum security model that the villains of cheap horror films get sent to) where, we learn, he’s planning his comeback after a four-year absence. Freddy gets his power from fear, you see, and the children of Springwood have forgotten about him. No memory, no fear, no Freddy. But, Freddy being Freddy, he has a plan to get around that. A plan that requires the services of another one of Hell’s inmates: Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger).
Jason, you see, has been cast into eternal slumber (since he can’t die), dreaming that he’s still killing people around Crystal Lake. In this manner he’s been safely contained for an indeterminate number of years when Freddy finds him. Since Jason is sleeping, Freddy can enter his dream, taking the form of Jason’s long-dead mother, Pamela Voorhess (Paula Shaw, gracefully filling in for Betsy Palmer). After quickly liming Jason’s ‘rules,’ Freddy sends him off to Elm Street, where teenager Lori Campbell (Monica Keena) now lives at Nancy Thompson’s old address: 1428 Elm Street.
Lori, we quickly learn, has been living in the shadow of a double tragedy for the past few years: her mother died in a car crash (supposedly: does anyone ever actually die in a car crash in these things?) and her boyfriend Will (Jason Riter) disappeared almost immediately afterwards. Her best friend Kia (Kelly Rowland) is trying to get her back in the world, which in Kia’s mind means hooking up with a semi-acquaintance: their friend Gibb (Katherine Isabelle)’s boyfriend’s friend (if you didn’t follow that, don’t worry about it). Fortunately, the evening is cut short (snigger) when Gibb’s boyfriend, Trey (Jesse Hutch) has a richly deserved encounter with Jason.
When the police arrive, Lori overhears one nervous deputy saying that “It’s gotta be him, right? It’s gotta be Freddy Krueger…” before the sheriff (Gary Chalk: forever Optimus Primal to me) shuts him up.
Meanwhile, at Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, Will and his friend Mark (Brendan Fletcher) are lining up for their nightly dose of Hypnocil (a dream suppressing drug) when Will notices a news report on the murder and recognizes Lori’s house. Frantic with worry, he convinces Mark to help him escape and the two head for Springwood.
At the police station, Lori asks Deputy Stubbs (Lochlyn Monroe) for information, but he can’t tell her anything. Then, trying to remember the name she overheard at the crime scene, she suddenly finds herself completely alone in the station…
I don’t want to give too much more away, since there’s actually a number of unexpected twists and turns along the way and one of the film’s joys is seeing how the conflict between Freddy and Jason unfolds. Suffice to say, Freddy’s plan doesn’t quite go off as he had expected and the two villains will soon be set against one another. The most surprising thing about the film, however, is the mere fact that it has some surprises. Here is a level of care and creative energy that’s rare for any kind of movie, let alone an exhibition match between two horror-movie villains.
For instance, the filmmakers didn’t just take incidents from previous films and recycle them. Instead they actually considered why things happened the way they did and how they could use those rules in new and interesting ways. A good example of this is the way they bring back and expand upon Jason’s relationship with his mother. It’s something that everyone knows about, that’s been referenced constantly throughout the series, but which hardly anyone has ever done anything with. Usually the fact that Jason had a mother who thought he drowned and whose death somehow drove him into his own killing spree is simply brought up and then dropped as part of ‘the legend.’ Here the filmmakers use Pamela Voorhees as a key factor in the plot. She’s both the means by which Freddy controls Jason and, in rather remarkable moment, the reason Jason turns on Freddy. The mere fact that the filmmakers decided to include Pamela Voorhees as a character at all shows a level of creativity and respect for the material that goes beyond anything we could have expected (since she hasn’t been seen at all since the second film).
That’s another thing, the filmmakers treated the Nightmare and Friday films with a startling level of dignity: far outweighing anything they actually deserve. The treat the stories seriously and lovingly build on them (rather than simply parodying or rehashing bits of them). This is especially clear in the case of Jason, who gets some very nice character touches. They not only draw inspiration from them, but they sprinkle the film with lots of loving little nods to previous films: things that most people wouldn’t register, but which fans will immediately pick up on, like the fact that Will had a habit of climbing the trellis to visit Lori, just like Glen and Nancy used to do, or the moment where Jason, as a child, gets a sugar-sack pulled over his head.
One of the really cool things about this movie is the way it keeps jumping back and forth between being a Nightmare film and a Friday film. That is, one scene will be done in the style of one of the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks: it’ll be brighter, with more focus on the adults and with a kind of silent dread hanging over it. You might suddenly start to notice little things that are out of place, like an off-putting sign on a nurse’s table, or a character suddenly acting more callously than usual…Then the next scene will switch to the style of the Friday the 13th films: it’ll be darker, grimier, characters will tend to be more crass and unpleasant, there’s more likely to be sex and nudity, and Jason will just show up and do his thing with little or no fanfare. The effect is almost a kind of storytelling dance where the writers shift and swirl the different styles around until they slowly blend together into an almost perfect mixture. From its very first moments (featuring an overlay of the haunting Nightmare theme and the ‘ki-ki-ki’ motif from Friday) this movie creates a palpable sense of a meeting of the worlds. It’s easily the most satisfying and complete crossover I’ve ever seen, one that rewards careful attention to detail and demonstrates an almost encyclopedic knowledge of its two sources. This persists all the way up the end, where the standard climaxes of a Nightmare film (the heroine confronts Freddy in one final dream) and a Friday film (the survivors battle Jason at Camp Crystal Lake) play out simultaneously.
The movie is compact and well-structured. Key elements are quickly set up (Hypnocil, the Springwood conspiracy, etc.) and then carefully used to direct the characters actions. In other words, this is the rare horror movie where you almost never find yourself rhetorically shouting “why would anyone do that?!” The characters make mistakes, of course, but they’re mistakes that you could easily see someone making under the circumstances. For instance, at one point the kids decide to make a run to Westin Hills, exposing themselves to Freddy and Jason. Why? Because that’s the only place they can get the Hypnocil they need to protect themselves from Freddy while they work out a way to defeat him. Thus, there’s a clear and logical reason for their putting themselves in danger.
Likewise, even when characters do something foolish we can see why they do it. When Stubbs goes to the sheriff to say he thinks a copycat of “the old Jason Voorhees Crystal Lake killer” may be the culprit, there’s a reason why the sheriff blows him off and refuses to explain why: because he’s sure it’s Freddy and he can’t risk exposing more people to him. In a similar way, when Freddy decides to get Jason out of the picture by killing him (rather than just trying to send him back to Crystal Lake), it makes sense because, well, it’s Freddy: he’d want to get back at Jason, and a non-violent solution simply wouldn’t occur to him.
Which brings me to one of the key elements to any good crossover: the setup. Here we have one of the niftiest ones to date: Freddy has been forgotten and drained of his powers, and so hits on the plan to use Jason to make people think he’s returned, generating the fear that will fuel his return for real. At the same time, however, Freddy naturally never stopped to consider the consequences of bringing Jason into things, meaning he’s caught off guard when Jason proves harder to control than he thought.
What really stands out about this setup is that it’s driven entirely by the characters themselves. The whole plot is based on two facts of Freddy’s character: that he’s a perversely brilliant thinker and that he’s too arrogant to adequately question his own plans or to back down when a plan starts to fail. Having unleashed Jason without a second thought, Freddy becomes increasingly furious at his inability to shut Jason down again, leading him to try a more direct approach.
That’s the thing: the filmmakers actually took the time to figure out who these characters were before they wrote the film. That in itself is a fairly remarkable achievement (sadly enough). For a contrasting example, consider Alien vs. Predator, where the Predators are introduced wantonly slaughtering a bunch of unarmed people on their way to hunting the Aliens. That’s completely wrong. The Predators are supposed to be honor-bound hunters: they may be merciless and brutal, but they don’t just kill wantonly and they don’t attack defenseless prey.
Nothing like that happens here. Both characters are spot-on in what they will and will not do. It’s completely in character, for instance, that Freddy twice wastes so much time taunting his victims that they are able to slip through his fingers.
Robert Englund, as always, is perfect as Freddy. As I noted in my Nightmare on Elm Street review, here we have one of those rare marriages of character and actor that makes the role unacceptable from anyone else. Englund disappears completely into the character, to the point that it’s easy to forget that he’s acting at all and simply accept him as Freddy.
I should point out, however, that he’s much different than he was in the original Nightmare all those years ago. Freddy has changed through the years, and while he’s far better (and scarier) than he was in most of the latter Nightmare flicks, he’s still not the same shadowy boogeyman he was in the beginning. This Freddy is a lot more talkative, and while he doesn’t spout quite so many lame puns as usual, he still gets off a couple (though he’s played seriously enough that they don’t detract from the overall effect). Englund hams it up with gusto and is a joy to watch, but in tone he’s closer to the grim original film than to the comedic sequels. Boisterous as he is, Freddy maintains his edge throughout; he’s actually scary again.
Ken Kirzinger as Jason is, in some ways, even more impressive. Everyone knows that Robert Englund is the one and only Freddy, so it’s not much of a surprise that he nails the role. Kirzinger, on the other hand, is a newcomer, replacing four-time Jason portrayer Kane Hodder (who, it must be said, was an atypically energetic and effective Jason). For my money, though, Kirzinger is the best Jason we’ve ever had. Granted, that’s damning with faint praise since Jason isn’t a very, er, prestigious role, but nevertheless Kirzinger impresses with a combination of some subtle body acting (the scenes with his ‘mother’ are particularly good) and a pair of incredibly expressive eyes. Kirzinger was apparently hired for his eyes (together with his massive build) and they provide a surprisingly sympathetic view into Jason’s character; there’s cold fury when he’s killing people, wide-eyed rage when he faces Freddy, and even (in a particularly well done scene) child-like fear…
Kirzinger’s contribution is to make us root for Jason even after he kills dozens of people. Thanks to a combination of his surprisingly sympathetic portrayal and Englund’s ramped-up evilness, it works.
The other roles are generally adequate, but rather forgettable. Monica Keena makes a likeable final girl, though her deer-in-the-headlights expression gets a little old after a while. She’s best at the beginning and end of the film. Kelly Rowland is frankly annoying as Kia, though she improves as the film goes on. Jason Riter makes little impression either way, but has his moments. Brendan Fletcher as Mark sells some of the scariest scenes in the film very well. Paula Shaw ably fills Betsy Palmer’s shoes, to the point that we almost don’t notice the switch (she does an especially good job of transferring between the ‘mother’ and ‘disguised Freddy’ personas).
My two favorite performances (outside the title characters) are Katharine Isabelle as Gibb and Chris Marquette as Linderman. They stand out as two stock characters (the slut and the nerd respectively) who are given a surprising level of depth by their talented portrayers. Gibb isn’t just the standard ‘Slasher-movie slut:’ she’s clearly a nice girl who lets herself be used by her pig of a boyfriend and drinks and smokes in an attempt to blunt her self-loathing. Her plight is depicted as a real tragedy, one which her friends can only help by being there for her. Linderman, likewise, is in outline the standard ‘nerd,’ but at the same time he shows the capacity for real maturity and compassion towards other people. He’s someone who is able to understand and sympathize with a broad range of people, and in the end even shows himself to be a brave, selfless individual.
All the above is done in short, deft strokes (since neither character has a lot of screen time), but it’s part of the film’s effectiveness that it carefully sketches its characters as real people rather than just walking targets (for the most part). Like the original Nightmare, you could see yourself spending a film just watching these people dealing with their normal problems.
You may have noticed that I’ve dared to call this film ‘scary’ a number of times. Well, against all odds, it is in places. It’s not as effective as, say, Halloween or the original Nightmare, but it gets the job done. Scenes like the opening dream-sequence around Crystal Lake, a truly disturbing nightmare mid-way through the film, and the unexpected conclusion to the first fight are genuinely unnerving. It helps that the director, Ronny Yu, has a good sense of timing, as well as the aforementioned care taken in the characters.
But of course, all this is icing on the cake for the real reason we’re here: the fights. Well, they’re good: pretty much everything you’d want them to be. Not only that, but they do a good job of making them fresh and inventive. Freddy and Jason simply slashing at each other would get boring, so the filmmakers do neat things like having Freddy try a bunch of different tricks to off-set Jason’s size advantage (and having them occasionally backfire spectacularly on him). The fights hit all the beats we want them to (i.e. there are moments when their weapons clash, they each get to use the other’s signature weapon at one point, etc), but they also come up with a number of moments that we never could have anticipated, such as the hilarious bit where Freddy tries to kick Jason in the crotch and…well, let’s just say it doesn’t work.
There are a lot of little pleasures in this film, like the jaw-dropping sequence where Jason comes across two obnoxious stoners in a cornfield (remember what I said about how most of the characters are people rather than walking targets? These are two of the exceptions), ends up getting lit on fire, and proceeds to massacre an entire rave. Or the part where the characters all sit down and pool their knowledge to figure out what’s going on and how they can stop it. I also like the sly literary reference where Freddy appears to a severally stoned character as a hookah-smoking caterpillar. Then, of course, there’s the film’s single best moment: when Freddy realizes that he’s been pulled into the real world just in time to meet a limitlessly enraged Jason. You will never see a better version of the expression “Oh, CRAP!”
Mixed in are some startling images: Freddy lounging (disguised) in a bathtub full of blood; Jason cutting a fiery swath through a cornfield as he pursues a fleeing victim; a spectral little girl with empty, bloody eye-sockets; a hospital ward full of coma-victims all sitting up and mouthing wordlessly; and (my favorite) a brief, wordless shot of Jason stalking slowly through a fog-bound Camp Crystal Lake…
Thematically, the movie is about memory: about things from out past that we’d rather forget which emerge violently despite our best efforts. In this regard Lori’s storyline is important: she’s living in the shadow of past tragedies that she doesn’t understand and can’t quite let go of, and which return unexpectedly to show themselves to be even worse than she imagined, requiring her to face them head-on. Likewise, Freddy draws his power from memory. “Being dead wasn’t a problem,” he tells us in his opening narration “but being forgotten; now that’s a bitch!”
Interestingly, this theme extends beyond the bounds of the film into the real world: Freddy and Jason are relics in real-life as much as they are in the movie. When this film came out it was twelve years since the last ‘canon’ Nightmare flick (Freddy’s Dead: the Final Nightmare) and nine since the meta-horror New Nightmare. Jason, meanwhile, had been revived the previous year for the moronic Jason X, but his series had properly ended ten years previously with Jason Goes to Hell. When we find Freddy, forgotten in Hell, and Jason, rotting away in the woods, we are picking them up after a decade’s absence. For us as for the characters, they’re just memories.
As things turned out, they weren’t being brought back to stay, but for a kind of swan song: a real finale for the two of them. With a pair of ill-conceived ‘reboots’ following years later, it seems that the original, the true Freddy and Jason have been laid to rest at last. It’s a better ending than either could have hopped for. In the case of Freddy especially it’s oddly moving: this was Robert Englund’s last turn in the role that defined his career, and it’s good to know he went out on a high-note.
Beyond that there is some very interesting subtext regarding the two: Freddy is a child murderer (as the film bluntly reminds us right off the bat) and Jason is a kind of child-man. Thus, Jason can be read as retribution being visited upon Freddy for all the children he’s killed. There’s also a pretty cool ‘fire and water’ symbolism going on throughout: Freddy died by fire, Jason by water. Freddy is introduced with fire (throwing a doll into a furnace) Jason with water (his latest victim goes skinny-dipping). Freddy’s scenes typically have a red color scheme; Jason’s have a blue one (in a nice detail, Pamela Voorhees’s trademark sweater – traditionally blue – is a Freddy-appropriate red here). Both elements are very much in view throughout, especially during the climax. Then, of course, there’s the amusing subtext of Freddy, the smug intellectual, getting his ass kicked by Jason, the blue-collar everyman, and who doesn’t like to see that?
It’s not perfect, of course. While the writing is generally solid, some of the characters are still skin-peelingly annoying or hateful, though fortunately most of them don’t last long. Kia, however, is an irritating character who’s around for most of the film. The gaps in the story where the filmmakers tried to fuse the two continuities are occasionally too big to paper over; such as the question of how directly Freddy is controlling Jason. Then there’s the fact that some people will simply find the blood and profanity unbearable, and there’s not a lot of help for that.
But beyond that there’s not a lot to complain about: the film is remarkably solid and well-written. I do, however, have to point out the amusingly dubious assertion the film makes that Springwood is within easy driving-distance of Camp Crystal Lake. I mean, yeah we never really settled on where Camp Crystal Lake was (though the implication was that it’s in New Jersey) and Springwood certainly has moved around a lot over the years (the first film was very clearly set in California, but one of the later flicks said it was in Ohio), but still: those poor, poor people living in that part of the country!
Basically, the secret to this film’s success could be summed up in the fact that, for the first time in living memory someone took these characters seriously (Jason in particular benefits from this. He’s never been more interesting…heck, he’s never been interesting period!). It’s one of those films that make me think that even the worst story is perhaps a little like Frankenstein’s monster: it only needs someone to be kind to it.
Final Rating: 4/5. Unless you’re especially adverse to this kind of film (which would understandable) it comes highly recommended. For horror fans, it’s a must-see. The best and most satisfying crossover to date.
Memorable Quotes:
Pamela Voorhees: “Jason. My special, special boy! Do you know what your gift is? No matter what they do to you, you cannot die. You can never die! You’ve just been sleeping, honey!”
Freddy Krueger: “Oh, that’s right! Everyone forgot! That’s why I needed Jason to kill for me, to get them to remember! But now, he JUST WON’T STOP! That hockey puck!”
Mark: “You want my advice? Coffee. Make friends with it.”
Deputy Stubbs: “You kids need some assistance?”
Gibb (thrusting her blood-soaked hands into his face): “WHAT THE F*** DO YOU THINK!?”
Freddy: “These children are mine, Jason! Go back where you came from!”
Eyeless Girl: “Freddy’s coming back.”
Mark: “SOMEONE PLEASE WAKE ME UP!”
Freeburg: “Better start thinking outside your little box, pal, because someone’s definitely been breaking the f**** reality rules.”
Pamela Voorhees: “Make them remember me, Jason! Make them remember what fear tastes like!”
Pamela Voorhees (to Jason): “You are like a big, stupid dog who can’t stop eating! Even though your master says you’ve had enough!”
Freddy: “Well, now it’s time to put this bad dog to sleep…for good!”
(Fighting in the dream world, Jason grabs Freddy)
Freddy: “Oh, scary!”
Freddy: “Ah, so you are afraid of something after all…”
Freddy: “Why won’t you die!?”
