Review: Freddy Vs. Jason (* 1/2)

"Steve Rhodes" wrote in message thlink.net...
FREDDY VS. JASON
A film review by Steve Rhodes


dear steve,


here's another review. read it. and make a statement, please:

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FREDDY VS. JASON
Review written by: Alex Sandell

A Freddy Vs. Jason film has been rumored at for so long now; it's
become an equal to its slasher anti-heroes in the department of urban
legends. I first heard rumblings of the movie in 1986, when both
titular titans of teenage terrorism had reached the horrific heights
of their popularity. People were placing bets on which bodily butcher
would win this bloody battle long before many of Freddy and Jason's
newer fans had even been conceived. Yet, the film never came. Fogies
old enough to have watched the original movies when they were released
in the theaters in the 1980s junked the concept and left it to rot in
the same trash-bin as the infamous rumor that there would be thirteen
Friday the 13th films, and that Ozzy Osbourne would star in the last
of them. Nearly 20 years later, and Ozzy was starring in his own MTV
reality show, Jason was stuck in space and Freddy was crammed in
creative limbo. Things weren't looking promising.

And then it was announced.

New Line Cinema didn't just buy the rights to the character of Jason
Voorhees from the tepid Paramount (where are those special edition
DVDs, Paramount?) to create sort of crappy semi-sequels such as Jason
Goes to Hell and Jason X. They really did buy the seminal slasher to
have the machete-wielding maniac fight the F*** out of New Line's own
flagship fiend, Freddy Krueger. Suddenly, all was right in the
universe. Freddy Vs. Jason was suddenly Freddy Vs. Jason. Yes, it was
the official title. It was a real movie. It was being made. Better
late than never, I've never said, but will most likely say at some
point in this review.

Okay, let me get this out of the way: Freddy Vs. Jason was well worth
the wait. Any fan of Freddy (Robert Englund) or Jason (Ken Kirzinger)
claiming to dislike the film are full of **** or too old to remember
why they liked these sorts of movies in the first place.

The movie begins with a foreboding moment featuring a pre-charcoaled
Freddy Krueger killing a young girl. The actual murder is off-screen,
but it manages to be pretty disconcerting, nonetheless. Not more than
a couple of minutes into the picture, and it's been reestablished that
Freddy is a prodigious prick, rather than a pun-puking comedian
(although he does still manage to produce a few puke-worthy puns).
Krueger even looks nastier. He's been given filed down fangs for teeth
and spooky ass eyes that would do Marilyn Mason proud. Freddy's got
his edge back. His finger-knives haven't been sharper since the
original A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Unfortunately for him, Krueger can't use those sharpened knives.
Freddy's power to navigate a nightmare comes from fear. Due to elderly
members of his old haunting grounds successfully eliminating almost
all traces of the once ignominious nocturnal hacker from teen
trepidation, Freddy is powerless (you must ignore Nightmare 6 and 7 to
believe this newfangled theory). Therefore, in all his infinite Freddy
wisdom, he conjures up Jason and gets the hockey-masked machete hack
to take a trip to Springwood, to terrorize the Elm Street kids to the
point where Freddy can, once again, be the man of their dreams. After
receiving orders from his mother, Pamela (Paula Shaw, so convincingly
mimicking Betsy Palmer's performance as Jason's mother in the first
two Friday the 13th films, that I actually thought she was Betsy
Palmer), Jason isn't a hard sell. Of course Freddy was busy
manipulating behind the scenes, but Jason was "never a very good
swimmer." Apparently he was never a very good "thinker," either.

So Jason leaves Camp Crystal Lake for Elm Street, and does what Jason
does best ... slice, dice and slaughter the living hell out of horny
adolescents. What a job he does. For the first time in over a decade,
Jason is actually scary again. Sure, diehard fans of the genre won't
find much to give them a start, but horror greenhorns are provided
with plenty of splat, slashing and plunge to keep them on the edge of
their seats. The audience at the screening that I attended was popping
out of their chairs so often that the auditorium looked like a
jam-packed box of old-fashioned Mexican Jumping Beans.

What's left for the diehards? Hardcore action and gore. Enough of both
to fill at least two movies. Only a few weeks ago I announced my
astonishment over Bad Boys II upping the ante of "acceptable" R-rated
raunch. Freddy Vs. Jason calls the Bad Boys' bluff and ups them to a
point approaching impossible. There is blood-spurting in this film
that is literally at an Evil Dead level. There are a few scenes which
have obviously been tampered with by the MPAA, but the film still gets
away with murder ... about 20 times. This is quite easily the goriest
Friday the 13th film since the fourth in the series, and no A
Nightmare on Elm Street film has ever been this grisly.

Ronny Yu, director of Bride of Chucky, and the man at the helm of
Freddy Vs. Jason, brings the twisted camp he brought to the Child's
Play series to the Nightmare and Friday films. This is Yu's pièce de
résistance. The man grasps the fine balance between comedy and terror.
He's able to juggle eerie scenes of dread with wild comedic battles
between the hateful horror hellhounds in an almost seamless fashion.
It's hard to imagine anyone could pull off the high-energy cinema-rush
that is the battle between Freddy and Jason, but Yu pulls it off in
spades. You'll never be able to guess which one of the two comes out
the victor. It's high-speed, intense and everything you expected but
more than you ever wished for.

Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, writing their first screenplay, manage
to make Freddy Vs. Jason faithful to both the Nightmare and Friday
series. They provide the blueprint of humor, action and scares that Yu
brings to life on the screen. There isn't much in the way of character
development or story, but Shannon and Swift knew that this movie was
about Freddy and Jason. This movie was about a killer battle between
two unstoppable killers. The screenplay dishes it out faster than
someone refilling an "all-you-can-eat" buffet during a "Now Leaving
Weight Watchers" convention.

I dare you not to have fun watching Freddy Vs. Jason. It's is the most
entertaining film of the summer, the best slasher flick in years, and
one of the best pictures released in 2003. I've waited a long time for
my two favorite horror heroes to make a comeback. Now they finally get
the chance. It turns out that the old adage was true: It definitely is
better late than never.

On a scale of 1-10?

10

Source:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/...&r id=1186398