Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 18, 2003, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
So how do I review Freddy vs. Jason? Do I emphasize the actual Freddy-and-Jason stuff, which certainly delivers the goods for the duo’s fans, or all the stuff around it, which takes up considerably more screen time and is distinctly below par? Do I judge it by the standards of the Friday the 13th series, in which it emerges as a superior entry, or those of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, a comparison that isn’t nearly as flattering? Such is the quandary faced by the reviewer who refuses to take the mainstream tack of writing it off as a for-fanboys-only project.
Devotees of the titular stalkers will no doubt feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth by the film’s end, as the tussles between the duo pull out all the stops in true knock-down drag-out fashion. It’s also worth noting the leniency of the MPAA in these scenes and others; Freddy vs. Jason is the biggest gorefest to pass with an R rating in recent memory. By the climax, the two supernatural combatants are as drenched in blood as the antagonists in a John Woo Hong Kong film, which will help satisfy those who have been waiting (and waiting) for this movie to hit the screen for the many years since the idea was first brought up.
Trouble is, the film itself seems like it can’t wait to get to the showdown either. The hour or so leading up to the pair of fights (one in Freddy’s dream world, the other in Camp Crystal Lake reality) rushes through a series of half-formed or truncated-seeming scenes in which characters deliver the absolute minimum of banal, on-the-nose dialogue required to get to the next story point. At least screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (whose work was allegedly “polished” by David S. Goyer) have come up with a satisfyingly imaginative and plausible way to bring the slashers into the same universe. Freddy (Robert Englund), needing to spread a little fear among the Springwood teens who have been systematically drugged into dreamlessness, gets into Jason’s subconscious and impels the masked maniac (Ken Kirzinger) to rise up and spread a little carnage on Elm Street.
And wouldn’t you know it, Freddy’s favorite house is currently occupied by the nubile Lori (Monica Keena), who on the night of Jason’s visit is hosting her friends Kia (Destiny’s Child’s Kelly Rowland) and Gibb (played by Ginger Snaps’ Katharine Isabelle and her most unconvincing body double). Gibb’s hot-to-trot boyfriend shows up, only to be dispatched in one of the movie’s more effectively nasty murder setpieces, and when a local cop suggests that someone named “Freddy Krueger” might have been responsible—only to be quickly silenced by his superior—Lori and her friends’ interest is piqued. Who is this Freddy character that the adults don’t want to talk about? What’s his connection to Will (Jason Ritter), Lori’s old boyfriend who’s just escaped back to town after several years in a psychiatric clinic? And what does he have to do with the “pissed-off goalie” who soon invades a late-night cornfield rave and slaughters everyone in sight?
The answers involve promising explorations of themes addressed in previous Nightmare and, to a lesser extent, Friday films: the past haunting the present, adults whose desperation to protect their children only ends up harming them, the tenuous link between dreams and reality. In Freddy vs. Jason, though, everyone talks in baldfaced exposition-speak, and does so inconsistently; characters who are puzzled by or unfamiliar with a situation in one scene make great intuitive leaps of observation about it the next. At times, even basic shot continuity seems to have been sacrificed in favor of making sure even the slowest viewer understands what’s happening and why.
A stronger young cast might have put across this material more convincingly; as it stands, Keena and Ritter possess the right look but lack the gravity or the material to elevate their parts above the one-dimensional. Rowland and Isabelle are no better or worse than their functional roles require, while Kyle Labine makes an amusing impression as a wise-guy stoner who has what amount to the best lines (“What kind of pussy comes after you in your dreams?”).
Under the circumstances, it’s not hard for Englund to steal the show whenever he’s on screen, and he seems truly energized to be back behind the latex for the role that made him famous. Harking back to the character’s dark origins (including a couple of uncomfortable child-threatening scenes), Englund somewhat eschews the jokester persona adopted in the later Nightmare sequels to return to Freddy’s sadistic, sarcastic roots. He still cracks one-liners, but here he seems to be doing so for his own amusement, rather than that of the audience. As for Jason—well, with all due respect to Kane Hodder, a nice guy who’s done a great deal for Friday and its fandom, the role isn’t a difficult one to fill for a performer with the right size and physical comportment, and Kirzinger imbues the Crystal Lake stalker with the proper menacing presence.
Kirzinger’s stuntman’s past also comes in handy for the sequences in which he’s flung around the dreamscape by Freddy, and when he smashes and bashes the scarred stalker in the real world. Director Ronny Yu and his action team have choreographed, shot and edited the battles with skill and a strong assist by the FX teams, including digital supervisor Ariel Velasco Shaw and special makeup wiz Bill Terezakis (who warrants, but doesn’t receive, the same upfront credits placement as Shaw). Elsewhere, though, beyond the occasional high overhead shot and pixillated slow-motion, Freddy vs. Jason contains little of the visual panache Yu brought to his HK films like Bride With White Hair, or even to Bride of Chucky. In that sequel, too, the villains had much more juice than the colorless teen protagonists; the difference here is that the bad guys are offscreen for far greater amounts of screen time.
Will this make a difference to those who are simply plunking down their dollars to witness the battle royal? It may well not, and the combat is spectacular enough that audiences might even find it a just reward for slogging through the perfunctory drama that precedes it. If attention had been paid to making the warm-up drama as compelling as the main event, however, Freddy vs. Jason coulda truly been a contender.
