(2003) ***1/2
Picture a boardroom of suits discussing how to save 2 dying horror franchises. They put every available man on the job and sift through hours and hours of film to extract what works in these movies and what failed miserably. They then decide to combine the two to raise maximum interest level and pit the maniacs against eachother for the ultimate showdown. Can't miss, right? The first half of the movie is solid. Time has not been kind to the Elm St. flicks and they realized this and ignored the hokiness and bad jokes that defined every Elm St. since the first one. (Wes Craven's New Nightmare, the one innovative development played itself out in the Scream trilogy.) So Freddy was scary again or at least, scary enough and they spent some time reminding you why you should fear the goofy bastard. For the Friday the 13th spects, they stuck to what has proven to work time and time again- namely stupid teenagers getting stalked, gratuitous T and/or A, clever deaths, and a worthy scream queen. The problem with this movie is the epic battle when Freddy and Jason
duke it out to the finish. While there is certainly no lack of violence and gore, I could never really give a shit about the outcome simply because THEY NEVER DIE no matter how many times over you kill them. So a 20 minute battle is virtually pointless when you have nothing invested in it. And sure enough, the ending-that-leaves-it-open-to-a-sequel emerged proving my point.
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