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The Story
Before Jason goes into outer space to battle cyborgs with detachable nipples, he must battle his greatest foe ever. Still stuck in hell, Freddy Kruger (Of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame) became restless being unable to frighten teenagers in Springwood anymore. To problem lies in that no one remembers him. In order to bring back that fear that gives him power, Freddy imitates Mrs. Voorhees in order to convince Jason to rise up again and have some fun with the kids of Elm Street. With that, Jason Voorhees is alive again and has machete in hand.
Jason's first kill ends up being at a small party where he slashes and folds a bed up on a male who just had sex. Everyone else is able to run to safety and it appears as if that's all the fun Jason will have that night. As it turns out, the house he went to is 1428 Elm Street, one of Freddy's favorite spots. At the police station, Lori Campbell (Perhaps a nod at Laurie Strode of Halloween and Sydney Campbell of Scream?), begins hearing the murmurs of the police. It seems as if the police are trying to keep something very secretive. Lori does pick up on one name though - Freddy Kruger.
Soon, Lori and her friends begin to dream of Freddy. Much to Freddy's frustration, he still isn't powerful enough to kill in their nightmares. So just as any leader would do, he sends out his army of one to do some more slashing. With two more deaths, Lori and her friends are becoming more unglued by the minute. Meanwhile, over at Westin Hills for the insane (The same place shown in Nightmare 3), Will and Mark sees a television report about the initial murder. Will, the former boyfriend of Lori, fears for her safety and the pair of friends manages to break out into freedom. As they meet up with Lori and her group of surviving friends, they begin piecing together what's really going on. With the fear finally up high enough, Freddy goes for his first victim, Lori's best friend, Gibb (Girlfriend of the first victim of Jason). However, before he's able to kill her in her nightmares, Jason kills her in reality. Mr. Kruger isn't pleased at all.
The gang of friends head back over to Westin Hills to try and stock up on a drug known as Hypnocil. Will and Mark both theorized that this mystery drug was what kept them from having nightmares while institutionalized. Soon though, Jason and Freddy joins the party with several kills occurring. While Freddy possess one of the friends, he injects Jason with a high amount of a sleep drug, knocking Jason out. Will, Lori and the few friends left finally realizes that Jason was being used by Freddy and that their best chance of survival is to bring Freddy out into reality so he and Jason can fight at Crystal Lake. Why Crystal Lake? They theorize that as long as they escape, Jason would have no reason to follow them. Hmm. In order to bring Freddy into reality, Lori goes to sleep.
In the nightmare, Freddy and Jason goes at it with Freddy controlling most of the fight. Once Freddy is thrown into some pipes and water becomes to come out, Jason is frozen in his place, fearful of water. Jason reverts back to being a young boy, except for the fact that he's still wearing a hockey mask. Freddy humiliates and tortures Jason for the rest of the nightmare. However, Jason eventually comes out of his sleep leaving Lori all alone with Freddy. At Crystal Lake, Will guards over Lori until she can finally wake up while Jason attacks anyone near him. Once Lori is woken up, the true fight begins. Freddy vs Jason in reality with Jason no longer afraid of anything. A couple more deaths later and we're down to Freddy ripping Jason's arm off to use Jason's machete on himself. Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Jason rips Freddy's arm off and uses Freddy's glove to further injury Kruger. When it looks like Freddy has finally won and will be killing Lori and Will, Jason comes out of the water one last time and drags Freddy's body into the lake. Before he goes under all of the way, Lori uses the machete to chop Freddy's head off.
Will and Lori are your sole survivors as the scene cuts to a foggy lake in a dream like world. Hell. Jason slowly walks out of the water with Freddy's head in his hand. Just before the credits hit, Freddy's eyes turns to the camera and gives the audience a wink. Round 1 is a draw.
The Characters Lori Campbell - Heroine of the movie. Clueless about Freddy at the start of the movie, but finds out that Freddy played an important part of her past. Former girlfriend of Will.
Will - Forced to be at Westin Hills for four years without any contact to the outside world. Escapes to try and help his old girlfriend. Hero of the movie.
Kia Waterson - Best friend of Lori, Kia is your token black person in the movie. Obsessed with getting a nose job, she comes off as trying to be likable, but is really just annoying.
Mark Davis - Friend of Will who was forced into Westin Hills. Mark is the one who steals the keys to escape. Older brother was killed by Freddy Kruger which may have been the reason for being sent to the institution.
Gibb - The other girl friend of Lori's. The partier of the group, Gibb's boyfriend is killed by Jason before anyone else.
Charlie Linderman - Geeky friend who has a crush on Lori. Linderman's journey in the movie was a change in personality to find confidence and stand up for himself. A small relationship with Kia begins before their deaths.
Deputy Scott Stubbs - Having recently moved to Springwood, Stubbs is unaware of Freddy Kruger. Once he realizes that the police force is withholding secrets, he joins Lori and her friends to figure out what's going on.
Dr. Campbell - Father of Lori. Working at Westin Hills, he was behind the institutionalizing of Will and Mark. One of the major members of Springwood who holds the secret of Freddy. Dr. Campbell is the major backer in the distribution of Hypnocil.
Freddy Kruger - Killer in hell who brings Jason back to life in order to scare the teenagers of elm street so he can kill again.
Jason Voorhees - Killer brought back and used in order to help Freddy without realizing it.
The Verdict
With Jason X bringing in the worst profit in the history of the Friday films and Wes Craven's New Nightmare not being as profitable as the early Nightmares, the versus film needed to finally start filming. After ten years in the making, the results had to be incredible. Surely, after ten years of planning to bring together two of the best movie slashers around would have to produce one of the most epic horror movies ever. They failed.
It doesn't matter which series you look at, you're not really going to get great acting. However, the combination of poor actors with a horrible script, you're left with a piss poor excuse for a movie. Every teen was unbelievable and very corny. Why should I care about Lori's safety when the only thing worth caring about is her chest? She wouldn't be able to act believable if you held a real knife to her neck. Much like Jason X, there's a lot of cutesy lines that are supposed to be insanely popular. Most comes off as cheesy and embarrassing to see. For anyone who's seen the Ginger Snaps trilogy, Katharine Isabelle proves to be more than capable actress. However, with the script so terrible, her character of Gibb comes off as so over the top. The sole exception of the teenagers not to be annoying is Mark. Played by Brendan Fletcher (The Ginger Snaps sequels), Mark is not only believable, but is likable. I would of been fully behind the idea of Mark being the main character. After all, he does have the past with Freddy. Sadly, he's killed off half way through the movie.
Speaking of pasts with Freddy, in one of the more pointless subplots, Will believes that Lori's dad killed her mom. As it turns out, it was Freddy killing the mom in her nightmare with the father rushing in the room with a knife alarmed at what was going on. This seems like a decent enough subplot, but it is quickly abandon not long after the revelation occurs. It's back story for the sake of back story. It's pointless.
The main issue I have is with the writers, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. These two pathetic excuses for writers openly lied to the fans of the two series in Fangoria magazine. While advertising the movie before it came out, several articles were given to the pair. They kept talking about their "Code" that they must be able to follow if they were to do this movie. The biggest code from the list of eight was to remain faithful to the series of both Friday and Nightmare. Yet, Jason is scared of water? Huh? If Jason is so afraid of water, then why has he killed so many people in Crystal Lake? Hell, he even fights Freddy near the water. He never acted as if he had a problem with it before. Why does he suddenly have the issue for a brief time only? Then, why does Freddy even need Jason in the first place? Anyone who saw the first Nightmare knows that Nancy and her friends never even heard of Freddy Kruger before he started to haunt them. So now Freddy NEEDS fear in order to haunt people? Since when? With this being the sole reasoning for why the movie even occurs, they fucked up big time. Mr. Shannon and Mr. Swift clearly gave up on their rules in favor of just coming up with any crap they could think of to write.
In one of the more controversial moves in pre-production, four time Jason, Kane Hodder was rejected to play Jason one more time. Instead, Ken Kirzinger (Think back, I told you to remember this name) dons the iconic hockey mask. While many fans were irate about this, I found it to be a great move. This was a much different Jason than in the past few movies. He wasn't so "Grr, I'm going to kill everything that moves". Instead, he was far more sympathetic. One does not need to try too hard to find out about how difficult Kane Hodder was to work with. In Fangoria, the Jason X DVD and other sources, the crew and Hodder himself kept saying how Hodder would refuse to do things in the script because "Jason wouldn't do that." Why deal with an egotistical asshole who will fight you on every little move? On top of that, unlike Hodder, Kirzinger is actually tall. Jason looks a lot more like he did in the early moves rather than the short pudgy version of himself that Hodder portrayed.
While some of it was comical and over the top, I did greatly enjoy the fight sequences between Freddy and Jason. Both killers went balls to the wall and delivered a fight where neither guy was used to losing. While I'm praising one thing, I'll praise another. Robert Englund returns for his eighth Nightmare film and once again nails the role. Freddy is the fun loving wise cracker that fans got to know as his series went along. On top of that, Freddy never looked better. From the blue contacts to the extra detailed work on his burned and scarred face, Freddy looks so much better than he did in the early Nightmares.
With that out of the way, time to talk more about the assholes, Swift and Shannon. Another thing they promised were that both films would equally be represented. Basically, the film would be an equal mix of Nightmare and Friday. So you're not going to have a film that feels more like a Nightmare than Friday. However, what we got was another Nightmare. The only thing that is really 'Friday' about the movie was Jason Voorhees. Everything about the movie was Freddy though. Freddy could of brought back any other slasher and we would of had virtually the same exact movie. The main problem with this is that Jason does most of the kills. So basically, you have a Nightmare film without the high number of artistic kills. It's just a slash 'em up movie. Couldn't they have given Freddy a few more kills? The character of Kia was perfect for Freddy. Yet, she's killed when Jason bitch slaps her against a tree. Boring. In all, Freddy killed ONE PERSON....ONE! What the fuck?! Freddy is responsible for some of the most creative kills ever, yet he's only given one kill in this? Granted, they do show Freddy killing in flashbacks, but that's only two people.
While Jason X and Freddy vs Jason are roughly the same quality of film, I can go easy on Jason X. Jason X wasn't supposed to be a classic movie, instead it was nothing more than a way of keeping Jason fresh on the mind of people. After ten years of build up, this movie HAD to be great. Instead, it's easily one of both series' worst entries. Way to disappoint the fans you guys.
Even though the movie was horrible, it did accomplish one major goal. Money...and lots of it. After barely covering the expenses of Jason X, this film covered it's expenses and had nearly a six million dollar profit after only it's opening weekend. In all, it is the single most profitable movie in either series. It proves that a Freddy Vs. Jason movie is what the fans did want to see. However, it also makes New Line look even more idiotic for taking over ten years to finally bring the movie to the big screen. Instead of wasting their time making three movies that didn't do so well (Jason Goes to Hell, Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Jason X), they should of made this.
The big question now is what to do next? Should New Line go out and make a sequel, Freddy Vs. Jason II? With this movie being so horrible, will fans be so into seeing another movie since the special feel of it has wore off? Their answer came just a couple of months after the movie was released. Texas Chainsaw Massacre's remake ended up being a huge hit grossing nearly as much as Freddy Vs. Jason. Seeing how it was just the return of one slasher icon (One of lesser star power at that), it seems as if remakes were a surefire way to bring in the money. If that wasn't enough to prove that remakes were the way to go, 2004's remake of Dawn of the Dead and 2007's remake of Halloween once again showed that you can make a lot of money. Halloween was the highest grossing Halloween film ever (Not taking inflation into the equation) and Dawn of the Dead was the highest grossing zombie movie ever. So while some fans were waiting for Freddy and Jason to go at it again, they would not get their wish. Jason would be returning...in a huge way.
The Extras Death Count: 25
(This only includes Jason's kills both in reality and in dreams. The number could be higher from the massacre at the rave, but it's unknown how many died there.)
Boob Count: 2
(With one being in the shower at hard to see angles, this is quite a disappointing entry for a Friday film.)
Best Kill: Blake's father
(With two of the best killers in horror cinema, picking a best kill was so difficult since nothing really impressed me.)
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