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As the classic tale of Icarus has taught us, some men aspire
to too much. This is particularly true of artists for whom
the burden of dreams can be taxing, so when I heard that director
Ronny Yu (Bride Of Chucky) had signed on to
direct Freddy Vs. Jason I thought it pure hubris on
his part and I feared for his very sanity. One need only look
at the classic Hearts Of Darkness, a documentary about
Francis Ford Coppola’s ambitious struggles to bring
Apocalypse Now to the screen, to see what I’m talking
about. Imagine a movie with both Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees
in it! I mean the mortal mind strains just to comprehend such
a thing. Like Icarus’s flight, this too could be an affront
to the gods!
So first you’ll probably want to know how Yu goes about straddling
universes to bring these legends together. Well it seems Freddy
is in a state of limbo after his last vanquishing, still spying
on the teens of Elm Street, but apparently not strong enough
to really hurt any of them. Since what he needs to return
to form is fear, which he feeds on, he hatches a plan to inspire
some by bringing Jason Voorhees to town. He accomplishes this
by appearing as Jason’s dearly departed mother and directing
him out of Crystal Lake. (Apparently for this film Jason’s
space adventures haven’t happened –if only I could forget
as well.) Next thing you know Jason is in town and making
himself at home by slicing up annoying teens and inspiring
the necessary Goosebumps for Freddy’s return. It seems to
me the filmmakers missed out on a golden opportunity by not
showing us Jason’s travels. Did he just march there or maybe
take the bus? I must know!
Anyways it seems Freddy was a bit short-sighted because Jason
keeps killing the kids before they get a chance to go to sleep,
and because neither of them has ever done a workshop on conflict
resolution, they inevitably have to fight each other over
who gets to kill the little bastards. Naturally, none of this
is actually scary because the conventions of the slasher flick
are so clichéd at this point that they’ve actually inspired
two parody series. So it is in the spirit of Scream
that we are treated to a smirk and a wink to go along with
our buckets of blood. All in all it’s not a bad film, certainly
much better produced than most of those ’80s horror flicks.
And it is nice to see old Robert Englund, ripe as ever,
as Freddy Kruger the child-molesting, burn victim from hell,
but let’s face it these two belong to an I Love The ’80s clip
show. Today’s kids are just to jaded to appreciate their simple,
old-fashioned bloodshed. Somebody get a shovel, they’re starting
to smell!
—Ted Rholes
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
