Nightmare Retrospective | Freddy vs. Jason

Nightmare Retrospective | Freddy vs. Jason

Normally, I'd be watching these films in chronological release order, but I decided to skip ahead a bit to Freddy vs. Jason. After all, this was conceived as a direct sequel of a sort to Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, and it's also the last in this line of canon that was released - the final two movies I'll be covering are both reboots to some degree.

Freddy vs. Jason is somewhat of an odd beast, though, as it really doesn't have all that much to do with The Final Nightmare; the dream demons that were revealed to have contained the secret to Freddy's immortality were abandoned, as was his daughter (both good choices, in my opinion), and all of the characters here are brand new. In a way, that lets this film be far fresher than its direct predecessor, as it effectively wipes the slate clean of all of the extraneous baggage previous installments brought to the table and instead focused on what made Freddy Krueger so effective; a solid premise, a sinister design, and a delightfully twisted performance by Robert Englund.

Freddy is probably the best he's ever been in this movie; despite a few overly hammy one liners or scenes here and there, he's delightfully sadistic and sinister here, with an updated makeup design that brings to the table all of the modern polishes the 2000's had to offer without sacrificing the campy 80's appeal. Robert Englund steals the show once again, proving that he and the character of Freddy Krueger are essentially inseparable in the best way at this point.

What doesn't work quite as well is the early 2000's style, full of nu-metal influenced blasting hard rock guitars and excessive polishes that immediately date the film. It's more exploitative than most Nightmare on Elm Street movies, with more topless women for the camera to ogle at and more blood and gore courtesy of Jason and his sickeningly huge machete. The gore at least is pretty well done; it's excessive enough to fill its intended role in this horror icon vehicle, but not so over the top as to alienate all but the most hardcore Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th fans.

The story is a fairly simple one at its core; as the title suggests, it's a crossover in which Freddy Krueger squares off against Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th infamy. The setup for this confrontation contains some fascinating ideas - a decade or two after the events of the previous film, Freddy Krueger has essentially been rendered powerless due to a coverup executed by the adults and authorities in Springfield. Freddy's name has been stricken from every public record, the uttering of it made so taboo that nobody who is in the know dares to speak his name, and all who had come into contact with him are locked away in psychiatric wards and administered daily doses of Hypnocil; a drug that suppresses dreams.

The result of this is that the new generation of teenagers in Springfield have no idea who Freddy is or that he even existed. There is no longer any fear of this dream boogeyman, and as a result, he has no power, and can no longer affect the dreams of the living. However, he isn't dead, and after scouring the depths of Hell, he finally finds a partner that can help him return to terrorize the living; Jason Voorhees.

Through dream trickery, Freddy resurrects Jason and manipulates him into going on a killing spree on Elm Street. After a couple of brutal killings, the coincidence weighs too heavily on the minds of those in the know, and people began to utter Freddy's name once again. The fear of him begins to spread like a virus, passing from person to person as the legend begins to grow once again, and with it the fear.

In a smarter, more serious movie, this would have been absolutely terrifying to watch. It's something I've always found frightening; the horrific side of ideas, and how once you have a thought, you can never unthink it, even if that thought might prove dangerous for you. That being said, this is Freddy vs. Jason; it's not a smart or particularly serious film, and it's really nothing but an hour and a half of horror icon fanservice culminating in a big bloody duel between the two at Camp Crystal Lake after Freddy discovers he can no longer control Jason. Everything else really only serves to get them to that point or provide artificial stakes.

This makes certain elements of the plot feel somewhat extraneous, such as the characters of Will and Mark escaping the psych ward and having to evade authorities, or the final girl Lori's struggles with realizing that her dad potentially murdered her mother (we later find out that it was actually Freddy). There's a lot of plot happening in the first half of this film that ends up only really being there to raise artificial stakes for when Jason or Freddy end up killing people and to get the plot to the place it needs to be for Freddy and Jason to have a showdown. Once that happens, basically everything else is forgotten about.

The film succeeds more when it doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a certain absurdity that inherently comes with this sort of premise; one slasher villain alone is brutal and terrifying, but two? That's just absurd. People drop like flies; so quickly that it's impossible to really get attached to anyone, but the film doesn't really try that hard in that regard. The violence and kills range from brutal to cartoonish, but they're always pretty entertaining, and the final showdown is suitably ridiculous and bombastic.

The film ends with Freddy getting decapitated in a shot that's become as close to iconic as something from Freddy vs. Jason can get. Jason falls into Camp Crystal Lake and presumably drowns, but then we see a shot of him emerging from the lake, Freddy's severed head in toe. Freddy' winks at the camera, setting up for a sequel that never came. These kinds of endings are pretty tiring at this point.

I want to be clear that this is not a good film, but at the same time, I'm not really sure what we were supposed to expect from this. I had basically no expectations and those were met, and honestly it's a pretty fun watch if nothing else. The kills are done well, the acting and plot suitably campy, and the early 2000's aesthetics lend it a bit of a dated charm. It's not quite the masterclass of camp that was The Dream Child, but it does a bit more than The Dream Master with its "there's no way this will be good, so who cares?" sensibilities. If you were expecting anything more from this, I'd like to visit the timeline you come from someday; it sounds like a nice place to be.