This is an extremely aughts movie, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. It’s this terrible combination of post-Scream irony, second-gen affection for deep franchise backstory, and turn-of-the-century hemispherical fake boobs.

The basic concept of it is… well, let’s be honest: The basic concept is studio executives jamming two franchises together like a toddler with toy trucks. The execution of this concept is that Freddy wants to make everyone remember him again, and he manipulates Jason into going to Elm Street and doing some vaguely Freddy-style murders so that the adults who tried to suppress the memory of him will end up speculating about whether he’s back, and by doing so, summon him back.

This is silly (like, it involves a drug called Hypnocil[1] that keeps people from dreaming, just as a background setup fact), and is also slooooow, as the action is interrupted with scene after scene of tedious infodump.

But it gets even worse later, when Jason turns on Freddy and they fight. Because both franchises need their full complement of touchstones, this means that they go to Crystal Lake for the big climactic showdown, which of course makes no real sense, but hey, gotta check the boxes. So this showdown is what the movie’s been building to, and… it’s just kinda dumb. The fundamental problem is that Freddy is a magical dreamlord and Jason is a big lug, and the filmmakers need to figure out how that fight makes sense. It’s basically the same problem they had with Godzilla vs. Kong, except that here they didn’t have the luxury of retconning Jason (more than the Friday the 13th movies already do) to make him more powerful, like they did there.

If you love both Jason and Freddy, you’re gonna watch this no matter what. (Well, given how old it is, you’ve probably already seen it, perhaps decades ago.) But if you are a normal person, it is thoroughly skippable, even if you do want to watch the more essential installments of these franchises.

  1. There’s no “I” in Hypnocil, at least not where you’d think ↩︎