Dumb and Dumber.
I’m not a fan of either of these teen-screams franchises, I find Freddy laughable for all the wrong reasons and the Jason movies are just too slow and predictable. If someone held a bladed glove to my throat I’d pick the Freddy-flicks because at least they seem to know they are just a mainstream cheese for teenagers, only with fatalities.
The movie seems to know that not everyone can be a fan of both, so in a neat little 6 minute sequence they introduce us to the best parts of each franchise, both Freddy and Jason get a kill, there is attempted humour, some gore and of course unrestrained boobage.
Turns out that Big Jas is resurrected by Freddy masquerading as Jason’s ol’ Mum simply to kill some Elm St kids to get them scared enough again to take him seriously, whereby he can reinhabit their dreams once more and get back to his old tricks of hacking into them in increasingly unimaginative ways.
What they don’t mention that is the simple predictability of horror movies that have actually made teens desensitised to this sort of crap in the first place, but that might be too insightful and Freddy might disintegrate with the irony.
Turns out that the town in which Elm St is located simply ignored Freddy, and by pretending he didn’t exist, as a fictional creature he is he didn’t. If only we could do the same thing with (insert annoying skank or dick here. Initially I had Paris Hilton but it seemed too easy, much like she is in real life.)
So of course teens being teens we have a bunch of mid 20s playing school age idiots, they smoke, drink, swear, fornicate and die, usually in that order. Even the Destiny’s Child singer swore up a storm in this, and even though she does nothing for me I was strangely hoping she would take off her top at one point, she didn’t, and that’s probably for the best.
So the new spate of murders bring about talk that perhaps it is Freddy, and the rumours and gossip abound within the student body. Of course this results in kids having nightmares and opening the door for the guy in the Ernie jumper to hop through and gut them while they doze.
This part got me thinking about just how smart Nightmare was in developing a calling card that justifies any level of ridiculousness and creativity in coming up with the killing set pieces, for as everyone knows you can get up to some seriously wacky shit in your dreams. This means that Freddy can get away with having 40 foot arms, or being a baby, or emerging from within the bed. Jason just plods along, hacks off a limb, trudges after a screaming teen, and impales them on something, emerges from behind a door to put an axe through the head of a gaping student. Not exactly rocket science.
So in that vein Jason lumbers into a cornfield in which a rave is occuring, butchering as he goes, a few teens escape the slaughter and simply drive home, dropping off their friends on the way.
That’s it, they don’t call the cops or even their parents. In fact you’ll note that I have not named a single teen in the film, even though I am often lazy this is not the case on this occasion, they are seriously that interchangeable that it doesn’t matter one jot.
There is precious little else of note that happens, Freddy gets jealous of the freedom Jason has, what with him being real and able to cruise around having a few laughs while massacring kids, and decides to kill Jason, hence the title.
Who wins?
Who DIES?
WHO CARES?
Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Sometimes creative, but almost always boring and about as scary as a bad haircut.
