"SHIT, I THOUGHT WE WERE GETTING BEYONCE…" - review by Stewart.

Prior to my most recent preview screening, 'Freddy Vs. Jason', I and the assembled arbiters of national taste who had gathered for this, a sneak preview of one of the most hotly-anticipated nerd-fests of recent times, were explicitly beseeched to not reveal the ending of the movie. The dudes at Columbia Pictures clearly felt it unfair if we let the cat out of the bag vis-a-vis the gore-soaked outcome to the waiting legions of non-preview-going death-metal fans, who have obviously been hypothesising about said outcome over many a snakebite-and-black in 'The Dorchester Arms' for many years. This is the drool-worthy pairing that The Columbine Set have been beatin' 'emselves up and off over for God knows how long - way longer than 'Aliens Vs. Predator' even. The sweat of anticipation has passed thru both old skool Judas Priest t-shirts and nu metal Slipknot hoodies alike this past decade or so, and finally the world is about to see the tumultuous Battle Of The Bottom Shelf At Blockbuster's Favourite Sons, Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Yowzah.

Of course I, being me, will throw caution to the wind and reveal the identity of the ultimate loser in this clash of the latex titans - the paying public. Mustering my critical faculties for an adequate summation of this film, I fear I deal the flick the (clawed) hand it deserves by describing it thus: 'Freddy Vs. Jason' is absolute fucking shit.

It's dynamically badly written, and not in a fun way either - people during my screening simply laughed at some of the appalling yak spouted by the nubile teens. Bearing in mind everything there is to be said by movies of this ilk has been covered by the originals and then regurgitated back out again as the supposedly 'post-modern' bilge of the 'Scream' flicks, the cats behind this kind of shit need to raise their game - the recent 'Final Destination 2' is both funny, clever, and 'ironic' enough to please the smugger elements out there, (hey, that's me by the way - I'm not putting anybody down, just pointing it out), and despite the odd derogatory review is actually about one of the best of its kind for many years. 'Freddy Vs. Jason' is just a load of shoddy old balls.

And as for the acting - oi! Fuck me, Bojangles! Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus! Outside of Robert Englund as Freddy who always delivers a certain guilty pleasure, this wanky bag of old cack is thoroughly abysmally acted. As an example of how low this shonker goes, the best of a bad bunch is seasoned non-actor Kelly Rowland, (Not Beyonce or The Other One from 'Destiny's Child'), who at least makes a decent fist of it despite her obvious Jesus Freak unease at being made to speak 'sassy' and say 'fuck' a couple of times. The lead blonde chick, whoever she may be, is in it solely because she has ace breasts; I know a staple of such movies is the aceness of the lead blonde chick's breasts, but director Ronny Yu has clearly spent a vast hunk of the budget on various camera crane rigs in order for the lens to swoop above her and look down her top at every available opportunity. Its very much a film for little lads, is 'Freddy Vs. Jason'. The opening scene features a scene of dubious script and acting quality and particularly unfathomable logic, but magnificently gratuitous tits-out-ness - then the girl in question gets run through with a machete, just to teach her a lesson for not wearing a bra. The other note-worthy freeze-frame jerk-off moment comes when one of the girls, (she's in overrated werewolf/puberty analogy-thon 'Ginger Snaps' and an episode of 'X Files', but I'll be fucked if I know her name), takes a shower. We see absolutely nothing flesh-wise, until the camera moves to an overhead shot wherein the skinny, perky, all-over-tanned young actress is replaced with a hugely silicone-knockered thirty-year-old Penthouse Pet, distinct white tanlines encompassing her voluminous fake appendages, face obscured by strategically-placed limbs. I like naked ladies, don't get me wrong, but such a body double faux pas is just shoddy in this day and age.

One of two things going in the film's favour is the sheer volume of bloody chunks the two monstrous leads carve off each other throughout the final showdown. Its pretty intense - despite the fact we know neither of these buggers are ever really going to die, we do get the general impression that they're starting to get a bit uncomfortable with the lumps of flesh popping off them and blood jetting from their wounds; at one point Freddy takes Jason's own machete to him and hacks the shit out of him, claret and liver flying everywhere - a moment more genuinely brutal and unsettling than anything in either of their respective film series to date. Despite the nagging knowledge that its all a very futile exercise, ('cos yeah, New Line are obviously going to kill off one of their major franchise characters for the sake of the plot, aren't they…), you can't deny that for a film called 'Freddy Vs. Jason', they're sure 'Vs.' each other in a very heavy way by the final act.

The other decent aspect of this flick is the odd occasional flash of visual flair. There's a very groovy daylight dream sequence at Camp Crystal Lake, (Jason's stomping ground), that takes on a kind of black and red solarised look when Freddy arrives that I think they should have employed throughout. The one thing about the whole 'Freddy's dream world' thing that's always narked me about the 'Elm St.' series is an over-reliance on conveying hellish menace by banging some red gels on the lights in a disused warehouse; about as other-worldly and scary-looking as a disused warehouse with red gels on the lights, in my opinion - okay, there's the whole 'Freddy is born of fire' schtick, but it looks shit, especially on video, the series' natural home, where the reds bleed like a stuck pig and render the picture a fuzzy, sloppy mess. The black 'n' red solarised open-air landscape in that one scene in 'FVs.J' carries all the same connotations while looking both fresh and infinitely more unsettlingly 'dreamlike' than any other excursion into Freddy's world in this or any other 'Elm St.' movie. There are also a couple of creepy scenes with Jason plodding around the lake, low light, mist, looks to be early morning, and even though he does little more than wade thru water with a disembodied head in his mitt, those two short sequences have a very unsettling air - you really feel that you're spying on a relentless killing machine going about his mundane everyday business.

Unlike a friend of mine who was almost giddy with anticipation at the preview, based on his teenage love for the characters in question, I didn't go in there expecting to be thrilled beyond belief and therefore don't feel disappointed because of dashed expectations. I've never rated the 'Friday The 13th' series particularly; the first few are over-rated cheap shit, the 3rd 3-D one is especially bollocks, but I don't really mind the later ones where they can't be arsed doing much more than throw people at Jason to slaughter one after the other as an excuse for the effects workshop to try out new and more ludicrous ways of cutting up rubber dummies. I have to say, I really enjoyed 'Jason X', the one where he ends up cyborg'ed-up in space - ridiculously good fun, but all told, they're pretty bad. Same for the 'Nightmare On Elm St.' films. One nice idea, (done better in Dennis Quaid's 'Dreamscape'), stretched out to interminable length - a series effectively creatively defunct before the fourth movie. So no, I wasn't disappointed because I'd been waiting for this cinematic moment for ten years and it didn't deliver - I was disappointed because, as a singular entity in its own right, the film just wasn't much cop.

Go and see 'Freddy Vs. Jason' if you like; I can imagine it's not too hard to glean some enjoyment from it on a basic level. Monsters, blood and tits - you've hit the pubescent boy motherlode. But be warned - I didn't pay to see it, and I STILL felt like asking for my money back.