Sam Panico Finally, after years of development stops and starts, arguably the two biggest horror icons of the 1980's would fight. Helmed by The Bride with White Hair director Ronny Yu, this would be the last film in both villain's series before they were rebooted.Freddy is stuck in Hell, powerless because the children of Springwood have forgotten about him. He disguises himself as Pamela Vorhees and sends a message to Jason, begging him to kill the teens he can no longer reach.The adults cover it up, just as they have for years. They don't want Freddy ever coming back, so they even send his victims to a sanitarium and give them Hypnocil to suppress their dreams. Freddy starts coming back with each kill, but then he realizes that Jason cannot be contained and that his mayhem will only cost him victims. Our protagonists try to pull Freddy from the dream world into our world, but Freddy catches Jason in his dream world, using his fear over drowning to defeat him. At the last moment, Jason actually saves everyone by returning to our world.By the end, Freddy is decapitated and Jason is dead. Or is he? Of course, he raises from the lake, holding his machete and Freddy's head as the bastard son of a thousand maniacs winks to the audience.Sadly, Kane Hodder was replaced by the even larger Ken Kirzinger. The director wanted a bigger, bulkier Jason. Oh well. Also, Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child is in this.While sequels were planned (rumored battles were to include Ash from Evil Dead, Pinhead from Hellraiser and Michael Myers from Halloween), nothing ever happened. There was a comic series that did this - more on that later.The movie figures out a nice way to connect the characters, but they went even further in the original script. One idea was that Freddy either raped or had a consensual sexual encounter with Jason's mother, and as a result, was Jason's dad. Or maybe Freddy had worked at Camp Crystal Lake and was the reason behind Jason's death. These ideas felt too contrived and were dropped.

lewisajhughes With the later entries into the 'Friday the 13th' and 'Nightmare on Elm Street' franchises proving hit and miss, it would have been easy for "Freddy vs Jason" to have flopped massively not just at the box office but also critically and narratively, however, this movie does quite the opposite and instead provides a satisfying end to Robert Englund's reign as Freddy Krueger and pays respectful homages to the franchises from which it is birthed.The primary focal point of attention for the majority of mainstream reviewers regarding horror movies, especially 'slasher' movies, is that they lack a real narrative or reason and rely on kill after kill to string the story together and, while this is true for many of its predescors in the Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises, the plot of this movie feels clear and cohesive with a distinct narrative that perfectly brings together the worlds of both Freddy and Jason by utilising iconographic locations and imagery we had seen previously. The contrast between Freddy's deviousity and Jason's brute strength is something horror fans have wanted to see since Freddy's debut on screen in 1984's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and the interest in the two horror icons meeting peaking during the cliffhanger ending of "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday" in which Jason's iconic mask is pulled into hell by Freddy's equally epochal glove; this film does not fail to meet these colossal expectations and delivers everything any horror fan would ever want to see in a clash of these titans.Characterisation in terms of the titular antagonists remains consistent to their over two-decade-long history in cinema: Jason is an unstoppable force of evil unparalleled in the fright he causes by remaining so silent and moving so montorously - this film continues the tradition of having Jason kill teens in outrageous and gruesome ways, of course - while Freddy is a one-liner-spewing immense terror-creating monster who will remain a pop culture icon even after these movies are long forgotten. Positively, the characterisation of the convention and rudimental teens in "Freddy vs Jason" is actually one of the best in the genre with primary protagonist Lori (Monica Keena) and her friend Kia (Kelly Rowland) being particularly memorable.Ultimately, "Freddy vs Jason" is an amazing watch for any long-term fan of either franchise or Horror fans as a whole and can be enjoyed just as any other slasher while also supplying a freshness to the industry by introducing the idea of horror legend crossover movies which will, hopefully, lead to further movies in the same vein being produced. With great characters and a fufilling answer to the time old question of "Who would win in a fight, Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees?" this film is definitely worth an 8/10 rating and your watch.

TheLittleSongbird The idea to have two horror character icons, Freddy Krueger from the 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' films and Jason Voorhees from the 'Friday the 13th' films, in the same film was an intriguing one and had a lot of potential to work. Unfortunately, 'Freddy vs. Jason' was an example of a film that executed this intriguing idea poorly and it really does not live up to its rather misleading title. 'Freddy vs. Jason' is not a complete disaster, then again this is coming from somebody who always tries to find something of worth in bad films. It has a visual eeriness (at times, when it's not looking like it was made on the cheap) and the music looms ominously and tries to give the film some kind of mood. The film also boasts one good performance, that of Robert Englund showing why Freddy's iconic status in the horror film genre is justified. When it comes to the acting stakes however, Englund is the only one who seemed to be trying. Ken Kirzinger never looks comfortable as Jason, which immediately dissipates any kind of menace. Regardless of how out of his depth Kirzinger was he is nothing compared to the dreadful, a very rare adjective for me these days when it comes to film critiquing, performances from everyone else, with a big dishonourable mention going to a catastrophically bad Kelly Rowland. Not that it is entirely their fault, though mostly it is. The characters that aren't Freddy and Jason are incredibly irritating and don't actually serve much point to the story other than having a subplot that induces unintentional laughter and feels really thrown in in a barely relevant way. Some of it is done to the writing and some of it is also to do with that the acting is as bad as it is. With its excessive froth, even more excessive cheese, stilted flow and over-reliance on clunky and useless exposition the dialogue is an embarrassment.'Freddy vs. Jason' even manages to foul up Freddy and Jason themselves. The myths, back-stories and development of both characters are muddled and ludicrous. There is a complete lack of scares, chills or suspense, thanks to pointless gore and a story that overdoses on daftness and relies far too much on the dreams within nightmares concept that was tired well before this film was made. Mostly it feels cheap and Ronny Yu's direction never rises above the half-hearted (most of the time he fails to reach even that). Overall, with an interesting idea going for it there was a decent film somewhere in 'Freddy vs. Jason'. It's just so frustrating that it turned out to be the mess that it is, with the huge (in number and size) flaws fighting the few good points every step of the way. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Ilikehorrormovies My mom thought it was stupid like I thought Jason X (2001) is stupid because the whole Jason in space idea but this film is fun. Not the best but enjoyable. I know it's better than Alien vs Predator because this one is enjoyable. It's better than Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice (2016) to be honest. Freddy almost win but he's been put out in the dream world and Jason win. Okay now that's out of the way now I want to say the story is spot on, the writting is alright, and the characters are not anoyying which is a good thing. So yeah this is my review of Freddy vs Jason (2003), it's worth a watch