I should note early on that is part of my Elm Street Retrospective series so will lean slightly more in that direction than the Friday the 13th films. Prepare for a sprinkle of bias I guess….. (Spoilers abound)
About a year ago or so, I joined a horror fandom group online. I thought that it would be a nice way to engage with like-minded fans of the genre, discuss our favourite movies and, maybe, get some recommendations for films I’d yet to see. Though there was a little of that, the majority of posts seemed to be “Who would win in a fight between X & Y?”. In fact, this dominated the forum so much that I left to never return. The final one that did for me was, I believe, “Who would win in a fight between Chucky & Pinhead?” Apart from the answer being, obviously Pinhead, this was just a little silly and a lot uninspiring. Ultimately I figured “Who cares!!” and promptly left the group.
This kind of question has been asked by horror fans for decades but, in 2003, director Ronny Yu sought to answer this question by taking a look at what might happen when two of modern horrors favourite icons, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, squared off against each other on the big screen. Freddy vs Jason was one hell of an exciting concept for me and I was curious to see, having not watched it for a while, how it held up.
Well……..
It had been nearly a decade since we’d last seen an “Elm Street” film with the unique “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” in 1994 but only two years since the tenth entry in the “Friday the 13th” series with “Jason X” doing well at the box office in 2001.
I was intrigued by how they would work these two iconic characters into the same story and the way that they did so is one of the films greater conceits.
Robert Englund gratefully returns as Freddy Krueger and his opening narration informs us that Freddy is in Hell after his defeat at the end of Freddy’s Dead. (It’s interesting to note that the Elm Street Films are considered canon in this movie as clips from previous entries are shown but the Friday’s less so as this could as easily be the Jason that we saw at the end of “Jason Goes To Hell” or the Jason defeated in “The Final Chapter“)
Either way, Freddy laments how he has been forgotten and that people no longer speak his name or fear him. To remedy this he scours the pits of Hell for a being of absolute evil to send to Springwood and kill in his name. He opts for Jason Vorhees who is, seemingly, spending his eternal torment stalking and killing teenagers. Freddy believes the kills that Jason performs will get attributed to him and when people start to mention Freddy Krueger, that will give him strength enough to return and carry on his dark business.
An early shot of a recently resurrected Jason strolling down Elm Street is quite a moment and allowed me to nerd out quite excitedly. Indeed, the film has a few moments that instil that feeling in me which is a shame as, sadly, I realised once the credits rolled at the end.
We’ve seen Jason walking up Elm Street which is a cool image and he heads to the famous no: 1428 where we are introduced to some of the main characters. Lori (Monica Keena) is the main female protagonist and “final girl” and is, I’m sorry to say, just not very good here. Though she shows some pep at the end of the film, her character never comes across as strong or resourceful as Nancy or Alice from the earlier Elm Street films or most of the female leads from the Friday the 13th’s. Most of the cast fall into this category unfortunately. Despite the decent visuals the film presents, the script isn’t great and when there’s a succession of bad lines and clunky exposition I was struggling to find good performances here.
Katharine Isabelle plays Gibb and she is a good actress. I’ve seen her in a number of horror films, including the Ginger Snaps series and American Mary and she’s great in them. Her time in this film is all to brief regrettably but, like most of the characters in this film, we don’t find out enough about them to care when they meet their end.
The other cast members, which include Destiny’s Childs singer Kelly Rowland (Kia) and John Ritter’s son Jason Ritter (Will) are average here and it’s hard to say whether that’s totally attributable to the script or their acting chops.
When we first meet Ritter’s character Will, he is residing within the Westin Hills Psychiatric establishment most prominently featured in “Dream Warriors” along with a whole bunch of teens including his friend Mark (Brendan Fletcher) and is being given dream supressing drugs to keep Freddy at bay.
The only other characters of note are Deputy Stubbs (Lochlyn Munro) who is the first to attribute the murders to Jason opposed to Freddy, Linderman (Chris Marquette) a nerd with a crush on Lori and Freeburg (Kyle Labine) a stoner who wanders into the principal cast seemingly by accident.
It’s Gibbs’ deeply unpleasant boyfriend that is first to be despatched by Jason and, if you’re into the kills primarily over anything else, this is one of the better ones in the movie as Jason stabs through his body with a machete then folds him in half along with the bed he’s laying on.
All it takes is Lori overhearing the name “Krueger” spoken by one of the attending police officers for Freddy to be able to begin getting into the dreams of the teens.
The crux here, however, and reason for the “Vs” part of the title is that Jason keeps robbing Freddy of his victims. On more than one occasion, a character will find themselves in a dream being toyed with by Freddy before Jason appears at the last moment and kills their physical body.
A decent scene in the film occurs after Jason has killed Gibb at a party amidst the local cornfields and his burning body chases a couple of stoners through the field in a great overhead wide shot before Jason gatecrashes the party and shows the main characters that he is there to double their problems.
When I was watching this film I did feel a little like Freddy inasmuch as, to me, it came across as an Elm Street film invaded by Friday the 13th opposed to the other way round. Freddy only really claims one victim in the movie (Will’s friend Mark) which does explain his growing ire towards the monster he unleashed.
About an hour into the film we get some of the most ham fisted exposition I’ve seen as the remaining “victims” discuss how they’re going to deal with their problem. Seemingly seconds after finding out the identity and back story of Jason they detail what Freddy’s intention was in unleashing him before Lori suddenly states that they could maybe use the fact that Freddy died by fire and Jason by water against them. This introduces a “Jason is afraid of water” concept that is completely ridiculous.