t's been 10 years since child killer Freddy Krueger (Englund) haunted the dreams of Springwood's children. But Freddy's ready for more, and he thinks he's figured out a way to bring fear back to Elm Street. Jason Voorhees (Kirzinger) slumbers eternally in the grave. Freddy enters Jason's dream, incarnates himself as Jason's mother, resurrects him and sics him on Springwood.
At the house on Elm Street, meanwhile, Lori (Keena), her friend Kia (Rowland) and a bunch of kids gather for a little R&R. Lori's widower father is away, and that makes her feel a little guilty about it. But not her friends: One young couple jumps right into bed. That's when Jason shows up.
After a brutal murder, the Springwood cops arrive on the scene, and they fear the worst: Freddy's back. All except the new deputy, Stubbs (Lochlyn Munro). He's not from Springwood and doesn't know who this "Freddy" is. But he does see a parallel with killings a while back at Camp Crystal Lake involving a machete-wielding madman.
In the police station, Lori has a horrible vision of a scarred man in a striped sweater. At the Western Hills sanitarium, meanwhile, Lori's long-lost boyfriend, Will (Ritter), is one of several teens being treated with a new drug that prevents them from dreaming. He sees a news report about a new killing in Springwood, and he and his friend Mark (Brendan Fletcher) conspire to escape to warn their friends.
Back in town, Lori and her friends are becoming aware that an ancient evil may be stalking them. But at a rave in a cornfield, a large man in a hockey mask appears and shows them that maybe there's a new killer in Springwood.
As fear mounts, Freddy realizes he has regained the power to invade dreams. But as he prepares to wreak his revenge once again, Jason intervenes. Infuriated, Freddy sets out to put a leash on Jason—or worse.
Mismatched opponents
get ready to rumble
Freddy vs. Jason winds up a summer of talking fish and not-so-jolly green giants with the long-anticipated smackdown between two horror-film icons. As directed by Hong Kong action helmer Yu (The Bride With White Hair, Bride of Chucky), Freddy vs. Jason features some kick-ass fight sequences, buckets o' gore and a polished look for a genre film, but otherwise disappoints, with a story that feels much too generic for such a momentous meeting of the blades.
Though the gimmick of matching up Freddy and Jason seems like a great idea, a key problem storywise is that the film attempts to give equal weight to two franchises that are ultimately not on a par with each other. Wes Craven's original Nightmare on Elm Street and a few of its spawn were moody, imaginative metaphors for the demons of adolescence. Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th, by contrast, was a very straightforward allegory about the wages of sin (i.e., premarital sex), and a ham-fisted one at that. (Cunningham gets a producer credit here; Craven was not involved.) The difference becomes apparent in Freddy vs. Jason. Whenever the story revolves around the Nightmare mythology, it resonates with angst and paranoia. Whenever it switches to Jason, it devolves into campy slasher mayhem. All well and good, but a little jarring.
Beyond that, the plot feels like every movie that has come before, with few surprises, except for some smartly executed executions. Most exasperating is that the actual Freddy-Jason tete-a-tete comes relatively late in the movie. Until then, it's a lot of teen yelling and screaming, and the movie doesn't measure up to the best installments of either franchise.
Englund is in fine form as Freddy, reminding us of his glory days. Stuntman Kirzinger steps in for Kane Hodder, the man behind the hockey mask in the last few Friday the 13th episodes. He's tall enough, and he adequately captures Jason's signature move: a cocked head. Rowland, one-third of the pop group Destiny's Child, makes her feature-film debut here, but doesn't leave much of an impression.
