I’ll be honest… The 4 star rating may well be a little bit on the generous side. I’m not convinced that it, as a stand alone movie deserves quite that many stars, but when you consider it alongside the the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises it stands up pretty well, and I think it’s the pleasant surprise of it being alright which makes it deserve a little extra credit. To be fair I was expecting it to be stupid and not in a ” it’s so bad it’s good” way… I thought it would just be straight up garbage, and it really wasn’t.
I also only just watched it for the first time specifically for this review – for that exact reason… The same reason why I have so far avoided the Jason X movie… What do you think, is it time to take the plunge with that one too?
I also avoided it for the first few Sunday Night Slasher reviews because I wanted to tackle the original Friday the 13th first and while trying to refresh my memory I hadn’t been able to find it for streaming any where. But that shouldn’t have mattered and it shouldn’t put you off seeing it either, as they give a pretty good introduction and history lesson on both characters through the course of the film. In that regard it actually does a sterling job, going in to decent detail for Jason certainly – who here doesn’t already know the back story for Freddy!?!
As a result of this I think this is a great movie for Freddy fans, a cool film for Jason fans and can be a really enjoyable time for fans of the slasher genre as a whole, even if you haven’t seen those 2 characters before (which let’s face it is pretty unlikely).
I do have to say as well that in this particular film they’ve made Jason look particularly gross under that mask. He’s played by a couple of different actors in this one and I’m sorry guys, but Kane Hodder is the quintessential Jason… He wasn’t the first, or the last but when you think of Jason, he’s your man – I think he played him best, and the Jason played in Freddy vs Jason just felt too slow… too dumb… not imposing enough – He wasn’t a particularly scary Jason. How he killed anyone in that field at the speed he moved at is absolutely beyond me – he looked like an extra from the Walking Dead.
Ok so the acting for Jason wasn’t awesome… The supporting cast all did pretty well – the acting was about as serious as you want from a horror movie but Freddy… Freddy was of course played by Robert Englund… I think if my memory serves correct, for the last time on the big screen. For me Englund remains the absolute embodiment of Freddy on the screen – the guy is an absolute maniac when he’s acting and no one will ever play him quite so well! His performance didn’t disappoint at all in this film.
This really is the mashup we never knew we needed, and which turned out to be the mashup we never truly needed, but it actually felt nice to see Freddy on screen as a whole new type of maniac… He controlled Jason for a while and it was him who came through with this whole scheme, showing a totally different but equally scary side to him, while Jason was able to just let loose like he always does.
As a result there are some really cool kills in this one – right out of the gates we have a naked jock get snapped in half in a bed – and he seriously had it coming! I love it when you hate a character right from the start and they don’t make you get used to him for ages before dealing with him… Oh yeah sorry, spoiler alert I guess!
Creative and over the top kills is something both characters are known for and its nice to see them keep that theme for this film, although come to think of it, they didn’t do that great a job with making Freddy’s kills memorable in this one… Who does he kill in this movie? Uhmmmm…. good question! Anyway Jason has some really cool kills under his belt from this movie, but they also give us plenty of other warm cuddly squeezes of nostalgia from locations and costume through to some familiar shots having Freddy’s face try to squeeze through a boiler.
With all that being said, I think you get the idea that this is a feel good horror. It really does feel like a best of nostalgia fest for Freddy and Jason fans… a niche it fills very neatly and does a great job in filling. I’m a fan of both and I thoroughly enjoyed it… Maybe it really does deserve 4 stars after all!
The only thing I hate about this is that a sequel called Freddy vs Jason vs Ash was planned and never made it to the light of day! I think it was made in to comic but I haven’t read it… Now that I know about I think I might need to try and track it down!
Nerd life 