FREDDY VS. JASON
By Raymond Knowby
There’s something inherently wrong when an audience is cheering for the wholesale slaughter of innocent (albeit annoying) screen victims. While I’m a fan of the original FRIDAY THE 13TH and HALLOWEEN, and some of their sequels to extents, we’ve more than lost the shock value of these movies. Today’s overkill video game attention span doesn’t get afraid or feel ill when someone buys it in graphic display, it eats it up with sadistic fervor.
It doesn’t help any that these films have been aimed toward satire since the entire genre began to be spoofed, even in the mid eighties. Director Ronny Yu, in what could and should be considered a spectacular Guinness book achievement, drives two dried up franchises into the grave with a single hundred minutes of shlocky, winking, barrell scraping loathesomeness. That it raked in 74 million at the box office says something far more terrifying.
The Elm Street baddie (Robert Englund) has found a way to bring himself back from dream purgatory by hoodwinking the dead Crystal Lake madman Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) into killing his target audience. Since they’ve all been taking medication that doesn’t allow them to dream (and since his town has generally erased his name from the book), Krueger’s power has diminished, and the only way to collect his souls is for the machete-wielding hulk to do the dirtywork for him. Of course, when he’s finally strong enough to come back, Jason isn’t quite up to retiring, and a grudge match of ridiculous proportions ensues.
It allegedly took ten years to come up with this screenplay. And while the VS. idea has been around since the heyday of classic cinema (many of the universal monsters ended up pitted against each other in at least one spin-off), this sloppy, pandering, ghastly affair should be ashamed of itself for catering to the worst of all lazy slasher cliches. As if a telltale sign of its snarky attitude, Freddy actually winks at the camera for the closing shot (seriously, all that is missing is the shrinking black iris and “THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!” in loony toons font). Maybe you’ll find some fun to be had within the sheer lunacy of such an asinine spectacle, but I say hold on to your dignity and pass.
This is the best nightmare on elm street movie yet!