Harefooted Halloween: Freddy vs. Jason

What I Liked: Everything.

What I Didn’t Like: Pretty much nothing.

Overall Impressions: It may seem like I’m giving this movie short shrift considering I wrote a fair amount on every Nightmare installment but to keep it short and sweet I think this is as perfect as you’re gonna get for this concept.  No need to beat it to death.

The design of the main contenders looks great, the effects are very nicely done (maybe a couple of bad CGI moments but impressive work overall), the idea of Freddy resurrecting Jason to instill fear in folks in order to bring himself back up to full power is totally reasonable and magically the film carries a vibe of both a Friday and Nightmare installment at the same time.

I mean they give you everything you want to see.  There are parts where Jason attacks by himself and Freddy attacks by himself.  They face off twice, once in the dream world and once in the real world.  There are dream sequences and there are woods sequences.  The carnage dished out to the humans is very nasty and a bunch of it is clever and varied.  We get our loathsome teens partying and having sex but we also have a smarter storyline about teens who escape from a mental hospital to help fight against Freddy and Jason.  Their backstory is pretty involved too.

Thankfully we’re back to Nightmare 1 &2 era Freddy where he’s amusing but not an outright comedian.  To me this is the ideal temperament.  He’s quick and intelligent enough to use his surroundings to his advantage but he’s not afraid to get up close with his blades.  Meanwhile Voorhees is massive and possesses superhuman strength.  He’s slow but he can tear your limbs off in an instant.  The matchup makes sense from an entertainment standpoint because they’re so different from each other.  And not only that they’re sincerely frightening here.  It feels like our heroes don’t stand a chance against either of them.

Hong Kong cinema veteran Ronny Yu (The Bride with White Hair) was brought in to direct.  He had modest success with Bride of Chucky in the states so he was already in the business of reinventing classic 80’s horror icons.  He manages to pull the pieces together in the right way to delicately balance the brute force of Jason and the playful torture of Freddy.

Unsurprisingly this was a legal and negotiating nightmare to pull off (pun intended).  Separate studios own the rights to the characters and each one wanted to make sure their guy was gonna be treated properly and that their fans would be satisfied with the results.  Well the gamble paid off because it did really well at the box office.

This movie has no right being this good for something so goddamn gimmicky.  It’s one of the best entries in both franchises.  There’s a ton of fun to be had.