The film begins with a recap of the life of Freddy Kreuger (Robert Englund). The child molester was burned alive by the angry parents of Elm Street. Shortly thereafter, Freddy came back and began fatally haunting teenagers in their dreams. To Freddy, those were the good old days. He has since been rendered powerless by a town that has chosen to forget him (or, more accurately, chosen not to teach their children about him). Because Freddy gets his power through fear, he cannot strike if the local teens have never heard of him. The few who do know something about him are quickly put in a mental institution and given an experimental drug that suppresses dreams. Essentially, he’s been blocked out.

But Freddy has a plan. He revitalizes Jason Voorhees, the hockey-masked serial killer, to do his dirty work for him. As a child, Jason drowned at Camp Crystal Lake because his counselors were too busy having sex to save him. He exacts his revenge by brutally attacking horny teenagers with a machete. (Where is Sigmund Freud when you need him?) Freddy gets Jason to go on a murderous rampage, then uses the fear he creates to recharge his own batteries. Or something like that…logic is not the strong point of this movie. When Jason starts doing too good a job of killing teenagers, Freddy gets jealous and decides to rid the world of Jason once and for all. Jason, naturally, refuses to go without a fight.

These movies always require a nubile young cast to get sliced and diced, and this one is no exception. Monica Keena plays Lori, in whose home Jason commits his first murder. Not so coincidentally, she lives in the same house where the original Nightmare on Elm Street took place. See how that works? Lori’s long-lost boyfriend Will (Jason Ritter) escapes from a psych ward, where he has been held against his will for daring to allege that Lori’s father murdered her mother. Kelly Rowland (member of the hot R&B group Destiny’s Child) plays Kia, Lori’s sassy friend, and Christopher George Marquette plays Linderman, the school geek who has a crush on Lori. Eventually, they figure out what’s going on (although how they do this is anybody’s guess) and devise a plan to send Freddy back to the netherworld of obscurity.

I’m not convinced that anyone will care about any of these characters. The supposed highlight of the film isn’t Freddy versus the teenagers, it’s Freddy versus Jason. This showdown between the horror legends is ostensibly the selling point. It is also the biggest cop-out of the year. Without giving away specifics, consider the fact that both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies always have one of those annoying “he’s still out there” endings that open the door for another sequel. Freddy vs. Jason is no different. If you are expecting to see one villain declared the ultimate victor, you’re in for a real disappointment. No such thing is going to occur so long as there’s a chance to make Freddy vs. Jason: Round 2. Yes, there is a nominal winner, but don’t think for a second that it’s final.

The Battle Royale quite frankly sucks, and what else is there? The acting is poor, at best. The writing is sloppy, filled with the exact kind of horror movie cliches that Jamie Kennedy so hilariously skewered as the film geek in Scream. The direction is dull and uninspired. Then again, what do you expect from Ronnie Yu, the auteur behind Bride of Chucky. Oh sure, he made a popular cult film called The Bride With White Hair in his native Hong Kong, but that doesn’t make his work here better. Even the leads don’t work. Robert Englund is middle-aged now, making Freddy seem less like a demon and more like…well, Keith Richards. And Jason has always been one-note. Hockey mask, big knife. So what?

Like I said at the top, I haven’t really liked either series. I’ve always been a little queasy with the way they glamorize violence. Freddy and Jason movies encourage the audience to cheer for the “cool” ways they graphically kill the characters. I really don’t go to movies to root for killers. I don’t go to get off on ultra-gory stabbings, beheadings, and impalings either. This is not fun for me, nor is it entertainment. The Freddy movies at least began with Wes Craven’s serious horror ambitions. The series was then prostituted and turned into a blood-drenched freak show. Craven briefly reclaimed his creation in New Nightmare but by that point the damage was done. Audiences were so primed for a slash-and-hack that they didn’t groove on Craven’s deconstructionist riffing. In short, the Freddy movies had become just like the Jason movies: all gore, no more.

Enough about this film. It’s not for me, and unless you are a serious fan of these characters, it’s not for you either. In the battle between Freddy and Jason, it’s the audience who loses.

( out of four)

Freddy vs. Jason is rated R for pervasive strong horror violence/gore, gruesome images, sexuality, drug use and language. The running time is 1 hour and 35 minutes.