Rating:

Maybe you avoided Freddy Vs. Jason because you heard so many conflicting reviews. Maybe you were so pissed about how lame Alien Vs. Predator was that you swore to avoid forever films that paired up titans from separate franchises. Well, feel conflicted no longer, guys and galleons, because I’m here to tell you that this movie rocks like Machine Head, The Number of the Beast and Led Zeppelin II combined.

The movie’s story revolves around a dead Freddy Krueger resurrecting a dead Jason Voorhees in order to instill fear in the residents of Elm Street, restoring Freddy’s power in the process. Or, more to the point, some magic happens really fast as an excuse to have Freddy and Jason appear in the same movie at last. And thank god it does. After an intolerable-even-to-fans Jason X and an enjoyable but awfully brainy Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, this movie is a triumphant return to form for both series. The circumstances don’t matter and when it comes to characters no one cares which is which. Granted, that situation can quickly turn boring, but Freddy Vs. Jason does everything right. It’s tautly paced, with the perfect ratio of mayhem to plot and it never skimps on the gore the way the VI through VIII era of Friday the 13th and the later Nightmare of Elm Street films did. In a movie like this we want blood by the bucket and viscera by the vat and, unlike in many of the horror films in recent years, we get exactly what we want.

It feels good to see these two well-loved characters doing exactly what they do best. Ken Kirzinger plays Jason every bit as well as the absent Kane Hodder, the man most famous for the part. While it may seem that a mute lumbering retard would be an easy role to play, it actually requires a certain amount of subtlety and gravitas to make the character frightening rather than…well, rather than just a mute lumbering retard. Robert Englund returns to the role of Freddy with the same glee he always brings to it. In addition to bringing on the fright and dispensing the one-liners we’ve grown accustomed to, he’s also given the chance in this movie to play completely to camera, looking straight at the audience and saying things like “I think I’ll let Jason have some fun!” with obvious relish.

The film is loaded with great things like these. There’s a character named Stubbs. There’s an admission by a girl that, of the Three Stooges, she’d most like to fuck Curly. There’s a giant caterpillar that jumps down a guy’s throat. There’s Freddy aptly summarizing Jason as “an ugly little shit.” and calling people bitches at every possible moment. There’s all this and so very much more.

Of course, in any discussion of a slasher film, it’s important to get down to what really matters: Tits and Death. Not counting pictures in a magazine spread about boob jobs, the movie only gives us seven exposed breasts, but that’s seven more than a lot of Best Picture winners have. Kills, though…we get no less than eighteen true onscreen kills. Here they all are (remember, this doesn’t include the innumerable instances of crotch-rocking violence that don’t actually lead to death), counting down to the most exciting.

18. Electrocution
17-13. Sliced across chest (five instances)
12. Poked with a bracket
11. Squashed by a door
10. Two people simultaneously run through with a spike.
9. Impaled with a machete and left hanging on a tree
8. Head turned around 180 degrees
7. Lit on fire and taunting message burned into back
6. Hit so hard with a machete that the body flies through the air and crashes into a tree.
5. Chopped with machete while using a severed head as a shield.
4. Flaming machete thrown through chest.
3. Chopped in half at the waist
2. Decapitation with head left perched atop body as a hilarious prank for the one who discovers it
1. Repeated stabbing culminating in being folded in half backward in a bed.

Given all that, how could you consider this movie anything less than phenomenal? Stop what you’re doing and rent it now, because from the opening scene to the time the credits roll it is one hundred percent fun.

If you didn’t like Freddy vs. Jason, you will also totally hate:

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
• A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge
• Halloween in September
• Child’s Play
• Halloween: Resurrection