Login
The idea to have two horror character icons, Freddy Krueger from the 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' films and Jason Voorhees from the 'Friday the 13th' films, in the same film was an intriguing one and had a lot of potential to work.
Unfortunately, 'Freddy vs. Jason' was an example of a film that executed this intriguing idea poorly and it really does not live up to its rather misleading title. 'Freddy vs. Jason' is not a complete disaster, then again this is coming from somebody who always tries to find something of worth in bad films. It has a visual eeriness (at times, when it's not looking like it was made on the cheap) and the music looms ominously and tries to give the film some kind of mood. The film also boasts one good performance, that of Robert Englund showing why Freddy's iconic status in the horror film genre is justified.
When it comes to the acting stakes however, Englund is the only one who seemed to be trying. Ken Kirzinger never looks comfortable as Jason, which immediately dissipates any kind of menace. Regardless of how out of his depth Kirzinger was he is nothing compared to the dreadful, a very rare adjective for me these days when it comes to film critiquing, performances from everyone else, with a big dishonourable mention going to a catastrophically bad Kelly Rowland.
Not that it is entirely their fault, though mostly it is. The characters that aren't Freddy and Jason are incredibly irritating and don't actually serve much point to the story other than having a subplot that induces unintentional laughter and feels really thrown in in a barely relevant way. Some of it is done to the writing and some of it is also to do with that the acting is as bad as it is. With its excessive froth, even more excessive cheese, stilted flow and over-reliance on clunky and useless exposition the dialogue is an embarrassment.
'Freddy vs. Jason' even manages to foul up Freddy and Jason themselves. The myths, back-stories and development of both characters are muddled and ludicrous. There is a complete lack of scares, chills or suspense, thanks to pointless gore and a story that overdoses on daftness and relies far too much on the dreams within nightmares concept that was tired well before this film was made. Mostly it feels cheap and Ronny Yu's direction never rises above the half-hearted (most of the time he fails to reach even that).
Overall, with an interesting idea going for it there was a decent film somewhere in 'Freddy vs. Jason'. It's just so frustrating that it turned out to be the mess that it is, with the huge (in number and size) flaws fighting the few good points every step of the way. 3/10 Bethany Cox
3/10
