Films: 2000s
(2003) Freddy vs. Jason
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Freddy vs. Jason
Director: Ronny Yu
Release: 2003
The two franchises from which "Freddy vs. Jason" stems suffered fairly different fates in the 1990s.
Of the two, "A Nightmare on Elm Street's" creator Wes Craven returned to his villain Freddy Krueger in 1994 with the mandate: Stop diluting the character. He reclaimed his culturally co-opted Krueger and made an important point about the mythology he'd helped advance in genre film.
Victor Miller never came back to Crystal Lake however, the setting (or at least the reference point) of all 10 previous "Friday the 13th" films. Jason Voorhees was never actually his villain, just an afterthought that producer Sean Cunningham picked up on with "Friday the 13th, Part 2."
Cunningham did return to the "Friday" films in 1993. The result was very different from Craven, with Jason continuing to journey farther and farther away from his quasi-mythological routes (Hell and outer space were the campy and underwhelming scenarios under Cunningham's supervision).
What "Freddy vs. Jason" does for both characters, with one key exception at the end of the movie, is acknowledge Craven's 1994 gospel. Director Ronny Yu and writers Damion Shannon and Mark Swift create a muscular, sometimes frightening and entirely entertaining story. "Freddy vs. Jason" is well acted and photographed, and it captures the essence of both film monsters at their peak.
The film opens with a dark recap of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund, revived and chewing scenery with gleeful abandon) narrated in the first person. "Freddy vs. Jason" reminds us that Krueger is truly evil, not comedic, and not just violent, but violent towards children, "especially little girls." When Krueger slops his tongue across a photograph of a preadolescent victim, the message is clear.
Similarly, the character of Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) is reintroduced. What Yu and crew get right is that Jason work best by formula. There is something ritualistic and pure about the early "Friday the 13th" franchise and "Freddy vs. Jason" takes the story back to the lake, back to the woods and back to the primal, devastating response to human sexuality that Jason represents. Jason is developed through backstory, and prodded forward towards complexity, but this is actually about bringing the character back to his roots. "Freddy vs. Jason" abandons the hulking, seething brute of later "Friday the 13th" interpretations and returns Jason to the man-child idiot incarnation of the early 1980s.
What follows is the plot that gets us to the "versus" part of the story.
Krueger wants to live again and prey on Elm Street, but Elm Street parents and authorities have created a final defense against his return by institutionalizing and drugging their children to prevent dreams. Without fear and its result nightmares, Krueger is without a gateway.
Finding Jason in a dormant and dreaming state, Krueger reanimates the machete-wielding behemoth and sends him to the Springwood neighborhood to murder and terrorize. Through the fear Jason creates, Krueger seeks reentry to the minds of now-sanitized and quarantined teenagers. The complication that follows, that Jason is uncontrollable and threatens to wholly eliminate the Elm Street teens that Krueger requires, creates the impetus for the showdown between the two.
The Elm Street teens are an interesting group. "Freddy vs. Jason" presents the genre-typical spectrum of good and despicable characters as its sacrificial lambs (and a lamb actually shows up to drive the point home), but it also digs a little deeper in the sociological underpinnings of its archetypes.
Katharine Isabelle plays Gibb, an Elm Street high schooler with a fairly serious drinking problem. It's not light material. Gibb's lover Trey (Jesse Hutch) is clearly an abuser. Both die in post-coital scenes, but, before her demise, Gibb is assaulted while unconscious by a partier (Alex Green). This is a mean and disturbing version of both "Elm Street" and "Friday" series. If the intent was to heed Craven's admonition about watering down the material, Shannon and Swift ratchet the intensity of the subject matter to an uncomfortable level.
Given the psychologically messy situations in Shannon and Swift's screenplay, the acting all around is substantial and textured. Performances sew "Freddy vs. Jason" into a nuanced whole, even when its plot contrivances and loose use of time and geography threaten to strain disbelief.
The principals, Lori (Monica Keena) and Will (Jason Ritter) fairly smolder in Yu's lens - capturing a smart virginal purity that allows both actors to get away with sometime burdensome expository dialogue. Will's hospital buddy Mark (Brendan Fletcher) steals every scene he's in, playing a neurotic, desperate survivor who can't break the gravity well of Krueger's impending return.
It is Kirzinger, however, who carries the film to classic genre moment. Yu and crew wisely chose to build "Freddy vs. Jason" around the notion that Jason Voorhees is terrifying but also pathetic. Kirzinger communicates blank instinct and relentless automaton threat in his physical performance of Jason.
Yu's use of lighting wraps Jason in some iconic profiles and silhouettes. Makeup choices reemphasize the physical retardation of the original boy character, and little touches, like a shock of long hair straying from under the hockey mask create a kind of verisimilitude that amplifies the effectiveness of the character.
Most important, when the camera comes close to the mask, Kirzinger's secret is revealed. In the eyes of the killer are an un-blameable nothingness, a state of child stupidity that elevates Jason to a poetic character without compromising his stature or absolving him of net evil. It is a minimalist performance in its textbook form. The impact is beautiful and scary.
Similarly, Englund re-crafts Krueger to more fully resemble the burned and vicious demon of the first two "Elm Street" installments. His face, additionally, is a marvel of makeup - morphing from one incarnation to another according to Kruger's emotional/demonic state. In some scenes, he is a dirty old man, in others, he is the satanic gargoyle sprung from a sleeping world into that of the living.
Yu directs martial arts films, and his use of varying camera speeds lends the physical violence of "Freddy vs. Jason" excruciating palpability. Gallons of blood fan from wounds and slop across walls and windows.
What is more, Yu is unflinching in his examination of the sad and unsettling effect the destruction of beautiful adolescents can have upon the viewer. His camera lingers on the last moment of two major characters near the end of the film in long, silent and mournful detail. This is not the gleeful creative death scenes of a tongue-in-cheek franchise. Yu asks the viewer to consider their feelings for the characters he's helped to build on the screen, and come to the conclusion that there is no anti-hero in the demonic or the pathetic killer.
There is only, in Yu's universe, horror and waste. Lori and Will represent a kind of platonic vow, a pact between damaged but hopeful young people that can perhaps overcome the senseless and overwhelming forces aligned against them. They combat Krueger and Jason, not just to stop the pair of monsters that have robbed their town of its childhood, but to symbolically preserve their childhood love.
In its pre-marriage state, their relationship represents a kind of spiritual force - an independent reaction to their parents' strategy of denial. This has been the stuff of previous "Nightmare" movies, in particular, that the corrupt and inactive adults of Springwood must be circumnavigated and superseded by a new "marriage" of male and female children who reset the caretaker/protector roles within the community.
In the figurative end, "Freddy vs. Jason" does everything right. It wallops with aggressive, balletic violence; surprising camera work and genuine visual "moments," in which actors, props and scenery come together in artful mise en scene; and vibrant realistic acting.
In the literal end, it makes a serious misstep, however. In its final seconds, "Freddy vs. Jason" suffers a blow almost serious enough to throw the whole construct out of whack, but Yu's film only teeters, it does not fall. One ill advised wink at the viewer does not undo "Freddy vs. Jason." The film proves there is life and substance in the 1980s mythology of vengeful monsters.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
Freddy vs. Jason, 2003
Most important, when the camera comes close to the mask, Kirzinger's secret is revealed. In the eyes of the killer are an un-blameable nothingness, a state of child stupidity that elevates Jason to a poetic character without compromising his stature or absolving him of net evil. It is a minimalist performance in its textbook form. The impact is beautiful and scary.
