robert englund, ken kirzinger
monica keena, jason ritter
kelly rowland
unfashionable observations rating: D+
The movie properly begins where the brilliant original A Nightmare on Elm Street left off: Freddy Krueger has been all but forgotten by the kids on Elm Street, and hence has been denied his powers. He derives his powers from people's fear of him; if there is no one left to remember him, there is also no one left to fear him. And if there is no one left to fear him, his livelihood of murdering children in their dreams is denied him.
Enter Jason Voorhees, the premier silent-but-deadly killer. Freddy makes an appearance in Jason's dreams and convinces him to rise from the dead and go to Elm Street to do what he does best. By killing kids on Elm Street, Freddy's legend would naturally become a hot topic again, once again instilling fear and nightmares on the kids of Springwood, and power in Freddy Krueger himself.
However, things get complicated when Freddy's master plan encounters a bit of a snag. Jason, in his blunt-object kind of blood-thirst, simply continues killing people, even after Freddy has regained power. A comical battle over who gets to kill the kids ensues.
This movie is, above everything else, a comedy. We see the big-breasted, naked woman who goes into the dark pool even after hearing creepy noises, only to end up impaled on a tree. We see the couple having wild sex, and can just smell the bloodbath that will necessarily follow. And it does. The formulas are exactly as they were 20 years before, and this is at once comical and intentional. Modern audiences have become so desensitized to nudity, violence and gore that the horror movie industry has little recourse but to throw their hands up in defeat and pump out even more nudity, more violence, and more gore. But of course, the end result becomes so overdone that the horror loses all sense of believability, if it ever had any to begin with. The horror becomes absurd, and it can only be seen as farcical and comic.
Aside from the few laughs and spooks, this movie was but an easily forgettable trip down memory lane for those of us who grew up in the 1980s. How Freddy would have hated this.
I'd give Ronny Yu's Freddy vs. Jason a D+.
