What Freddy vs. Jason Means to Me
I’ve held this movie off for far too long. Despite being a fan of both series of movies, both horror icons, I decided to deprive myself of seeing Freddy vs. Jason this past October, after I had seen all of the Friday movies within about a week. I needed to wait. After all, fans had to wait well over a decade after first talk of the spinoff had emerged. Hell, fans even had to wait a full decade after the crossover was explicitly hinted at, with the ending of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
Before this past October, I had seen all but parts 8 and 9 of the Friday series. I actually think Jason X was the first movie I had seen in the series. This is a series that I’ve come to love, but it happened slowly. It’s a series that I appreciate despite its many flaws, and for the endless sense of fun that each movie seems to basically embody. Each movie in the series knows exactly what it is. It knows it’s not art. It knows that it’s there just to entertain you.
I initially saw Jason X when I was in a period of trying to watch as many so-bad-they’re-good movies as I could. It was shortly after I had first seen The Room, Samurai Cop, and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Jason X didn’t really fit into that group, because it was, like the other movies, a movie that understood what it was. It wasn’t a failed attempt at making a serious movie. It was a goofy movie that relished in its silliness.
I saw the first Friday the 13th movie as a freshman in college. It didn’t blow me away, but I enjoyed it. I saw the second one soon after. It didn’t blow me away, but I enjoyed it. I saw the third one, and I didn’t like it. I probably would have given up on the series had I not already heard that the fourth one was arguably the best. While it didn’t blow me away, The Final Chapter was clearly more enjoyable than the other three. The promise that the fourth entry left me allowed me to overlook the flaws of A New Beginning, and continue. For some reason, I didn’t like the sixth one so much when I first saw it (I now wonder how closely I watched it, because it’s my favorite in the series), and I didn’t enjoy The New Blood too much, either. I now enjoy it about as much as the first two.
I stopped there. I’m not sure now if it was due to not having access to parts 8 and 9, or just fatigue with the series after not enjoying 5–7 too much. Regardless, I had more or less given up on the series until I decided to give it another go this past fall, finding a new interest.
My history with Freddy Krueger is much different. I had seen A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was still in high school, and at the time, it was the scariest movie I had ever seen. I loved it, and for whatever reason (perhaps an assumption that the sequels were bad), didn’t choose to pursue any of the subsequent films. I heard good things about New Nightmare, and eventually checked that one out, probably not long after I had seen the first seven Friday movies. I liked it, but it didn’t blow me away.
Probably about a year or two ago, I first saw A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Given that I knew this movie got a lot of hate, it was sort of a pleasant surprise, but it still wasn’t all that great. I then saw the third movie shortly after, and liked it a lot.
It wasn’t until I started this blog that I saw the other movies in the series, and it was plain to see the deterioration that had taken place. When I saw New Nightmare a second time, it felt so refreshing to see the series attempt to be scary again, and it’s an endlessly creative and well made movie on top of that.
Now that I’m caught up on both series, it’s time for me to watch Freddy vs. Jason. I actually don’t know a whole lot about the plot of this movie. I know that it was in development hell for a long time, of course, and I know that there was controversy over not casting Kane Hodder as Jason. I also know the movie was ridiculously successful, and was basically an event film, with it holding the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a horror film at the time. The marketing campaign was really clever, though I don’t remember any of this from when I was a kid. I did see the Freddy vs. Jason pre-fight hype thing done in Vegas in the style of a boxing weigh-in on YouTube recently. That was fun.
The marketing campaign for this movie made it clear that it was meant to be fun. It seemed like a reward being given to people who had been fans of both series for over two decades in the case of Friday, and nearly two decades in the case of Nightmare.
I may very well be disappointed by this movie, but I don’t think I’ll care. It’s just such a joy that this movie even exists. Knowing that just fills me with a little bit of happiness.
This movie may have come out about a decade after it should have, considering slasher movies were effectively killed off by Scream (though that also launched its own imitators). Regardless, this seems like a little bookend to one of the horror genre’s most popular, important, and controversial subgenres. Sure, slasher movies continue to exist to this day, and many franchises from the ’80s are still going, but they’re not as mainstream as they used to be. (I believe the Chucky and Hellraiser movies are now straight to video.)
Still, this movie cements the legacy of both Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees as the modern era’s greatest movie monsters. It’s Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster and Lugosi’s Dracula, basically, for a modern age. These are both figures that I knew of as a kid well before I had seen or even wanted to see any of their movies. I was born too late to have experienced these movies in my formative years, but their influence still seemed to be around me.
In the era of reboots and remakes, it seems like they may come back. Hell, they both did, with 2009’s Friday the 13th (an alright movie that definitely feels like it belongs in the series), and 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (a terrible movie). And now later this year, we’re getting another Halloween reboot, which seem s like it could be good. While that movie seems to be designed to officially end the series, even ignoring most of it, my guess is that if it’s successful (which I expect it will be), we’ll see Freddy and Jason back on the big screen soon enough. There was a Friday the 13th movie planned recently, but it was canceled after Rings didn’t do well, which seemed like a silly thing. Then Leatherface came out, and I don’t think anyone cared. Still, the new Halloween movie seems to have people’s interests already. It seems like a professional film, and my hope is that if it’s successful, it will inspire New Line to make new Freddy and Jason movies in the same sort of vain, seeking out actual filmmakers with ideas of stories they want to tell, rather than just redoing A Nightmare on Elm Street or making a by-the-numbers Friday the 13th movie.
I think there is hope for fans of these series. We all know it’s never really possible to kill off either Freddy or Jason.
