Freddy vs. Jason

Freddy vs. Jason

This was the 8th installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, one of my favorite film series ever, and it was the 11th film in the Friday the 13th series, also a very good franchise.
This was directed by Chinese director Ronny Yu, who isn`t very well known in North America, the only other big American thing he has done was Bride of Chucky, which I won`t get into.

Let’s start with a history lesson. In 1984, Wes Craven, who has become a god in the horror industry, released A Nightmare on Elm Street. This is one of my favorite horror movies; it was smart, tense and very scary. This was the only Nightmare film Wes Craven directed until the seventh, Wes Cravens New Nightmare. All of these movies were good, but never as good as the first, except maybe New Nightmare. They are basically about a child murderer who is eventually killed by angry parents, but comes back as a demon of sorts and haunts the children of Elm Street in their dreams. The films got kind of more outrageous as they went on, with Freddy becoming more comedic than scary. In Freddy vs. Jason he is less comedic, but still not as scary as he was in the first one. Four years before Wes Craven started Nightmare, Sean S. Cunningham made Friday the 13th. I have only seen the first movie in this series, except for small parts of most of the other films. The main plot for these movies is basically Jason stalks and kills teenagers at his camp. Pretty simple, but still pretty good. These films also got kind of weird, with Jason going to Manhattan, and Hell, and eventually even outer space. Jason is basically a zombie, he should be dead, but he just keeps going, he can`t die.

Now, onto the actual film. Freddy vs. Jason was not a film I was really looking forward to; I had heard some bad things about it, and not many good things. I was bored, and decided to watch it on Netflix. I was pleasantly surprised right from the beginning. Basically, Freddy has grown weak, because the people of Springwood have forgotten him, therefore they don`t fear him. He summons Jason to kill people there so they can fear again and he will grow strong once more.
The thing is, once Freddy is strong again, Jason can`t stop killing and starts taking Freddy`s victims. This pisses Freddy off, and the two fight, a lot.

As I said, this was a really good film. The acting was surprisingly good for a slasher film. But for me the best person in the movie was Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. This was his final appearance in film as Freddy; he had played Freddy in every Nightmare film. The main protagonists were all pretty good, but nothing special.

Over all, a very good film. Not the best installment in either series but still a good movie. The word “fun” comes to mind. It is two iconic horror figures just beating each other, and its awesome!