SPLATTERdrome

Release Date: August 15th, 2003

Director: Ronny Yu

Screenwriter: Damian Shannon & Mark Swift

Genre: Horror

 

 

I’ve been dreading this moment since my very first review in the series and now that we’re almost at the end of the journey, I find myself reflecting on how far we’ve come. Friday the 13th, an unlikely success which began with exaggerated, low-budget gore, somehow led to the creation of Freddy vs. Jason, a bloated, contrived, money-making powerhouse which assaults the intellect of anyone who watches it. To say that this film is idiotic doesn’t even scratch the surface of insults I wish to hurl at it.

 

Freddy vs. Jason fulfills the asinine promise of Jason Goes to Hell’s closing shot and does indeed pit the two slasher icons against one other in an overlong, Mortal Kombat-esque fight sequence. Leading up to this climax we are treated to over an hour of trite, exposition-laden dialogue, flat characters, sorry acting performances, easy explanations, gratuitous thunderstorms, poor continuity, rock & roll editing, and maybe the worst screenplay I’ve ever seen brought to life in a major studio production. 

 

This film abandons all the camp and tongue-in-cheek fun which highlighted the best films of each series and instead delivers us a humorless, self-important mess which should disappoint fans of both franchises. It’s obvious that director Ronny Yu had little familiarity with these characters or the films which made them famous. He does a good job reimagining origin stories for each but neither character behaves as fans have come to expect. Kane Hodder’s subtle but specific catalog of movements is abandoned (as was Hodder himself) for a bland, overly-aggressive Jason facsimile played by veteran stuntman Ken Kirzinger (series note: Kirzinger appeared as a cook in the diner scene in Part 8). Robert England returns as Freddy but the script does’t give him much to work with and his twisted enthusiasm is massively underutilized.

 

The only reason this movie exists is to satisfy fans who, for some reason, were dying to see these two characters on screen together. Since both franchises were now owned by New Line Cinema why not give it a try right? Well, there’s a reason this project was in studio limbo for almost a decade: it’s a BAD idea. The whole production is set up to show Jason and Freddy fighting so the movie is merely a vehicle to get the audience to that point. This means that all other characters and plot points are irrelevant, they exist only to move the picture along. This resulted in horrible writing in all aspects of the film and characters so poorly conceived that I could hardly watch their sad masquerade without a drink in hand.

 

There are many more criticisms to level at Freddy vs. Jason but, much as I felt while watching it, I’m now eager to put this experience behind me. The film is an utter disgrace and truly disrespectful to both franchises and their fans. When I saw it in theatres in 2003 I actually apologized to the person who accompanied me, that’s how ashamed I was to be associated with it. It's the rare instance when a non-pornographic film inspires humiliation rather than amusement. Nice work.