Freddy Vs Jason: 2 Decades Later

So it’s mid-August 2003. Me, my mom, her boyfriend and my sisters are riding around Chapel Hill on a hot summer night making our way to the only 2 movie theaters in town so we could see one of the biggest movies of the summer: Bad Boys 2. The first theater we went to, which was called the Timberline was sold out. The second one we went to which was called the Plaza was also sold out. Mind you this is already one month after the film’s initial release. We were bummed that we couldn’t see Bad Boys 2, but we weren’t going home.

We were determined to watch something that night and for some funny reason my mom’s boyfriend and my big sister suggested that we go watch Freddy Vs Jason, which had just come out that week. As a lifelong moviegoer I never imagined that night watching Freddy Vs Jason would be the most fun I have ever had at the movies, nor did I imagine that this film would have such a massive impact.

Today is August 15 and as of 2024 this marks the 21 year anniversary of when Freddy Vs Jason was first released. Freddy Vs Jason is the slasher film crossover of Freddy Krueger of the A Nightmare On Elm Street series and Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th series. When everyone first heard in early 2003 that Freddy Vs Jason was coming out the world of movie buffs went crazy. Never before had the world of horror been given such a treat like this. Slasher movie fans like myself always theorized about what it would be like if our favorite slasher icons met face to face and fought it out, now we finally had that epic face off.

10 year old me at that time was already a lifelong fan of both Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, but I didn’t think I would get a chance to see Freddy Vs Jason, not while it was in theaters at least. My mom hated horror and though my dad was a big horror/slasher fan he was never particularly a big fan of Freddy or Jason, not that I was aware of anyway. Me and big sister Rudy however, loved both of them, so it made perfect sense that she requested to see the movie in a spur of the moment. Freddy Vs Jason was a big part of what I called the summer of sequels. I called the summer of 2003 the summer of sequels because so many great sequels came out during that time, but what I didn’t realize about this crossover sequel called Freddy Vs Jason is that this sequel was almost 20 years in the making.

The idea to cross these two icons over with each other came to mind in the mid to late 1980’s back when the two titans were still in their primes. Due to the two characters being from different film studios and none of the ideas for them being given any serious effort of manifestation the project never got off the ground and remained in the filmmaking limbo process known as Development Hell. New Line Cinema studios was already responsible for the creation of A Nightmare On Elm Street, but by the 1990s they had also bought the rights of the Friday the 13th series from Paramount Studios and now owned Jason Voorhees. The crossover between the two titans was first teased in the conclusion of the first Friday the 13th film produced by New Line Cinema, Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Even with the characters now in the same studio it would still take nearly a decade for the project to get off the ground. In the mean time Freddy had a spin-off film (New Nightmare 1994) and Jason had another sequel (Jason X 2002). By the early 2000s screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift had been hired to write the screenplay for the film and director Ronny Yu had been chosen to direct the film. With a great young cast of actors added to the film’s production including: Monica Keena, Kelly Rowland, Jason Ritter and Lochlyn Monroe, a horror masterpiece was crafted out of what would be an epic crossover.

The build up to the release of this film was crazy fun. So many fans were theorizing about who they thought was gonna win the battle and imagined what it would be like if other horror icons battled it out as well. When I made it inside the theater and watched the end product on that big screen, it was an experience unlike anything before or after.

The film’s plot was centered around a disabled Freddy Krueger aka the Springwood Slasher, who can no longer inflict damage on his own and decides to use the Crystal Lake Killer known as Jason Voorhees to do his dirty work unwittingly. Jason eventually refuses to stand aside from killing Freddy’s livestock of children and Jason also becomes aware that Freddy has been manipulating him from the start, triggering a clash of the two titans.

Between Freddy’s story and Jason’s killing, the movie proved to be some of the most cinematic content I had ever seen from a slasher, thanks to Ronny Yu’s direction. As we watched this film the entire screening room sounded like a mixture of fans from a comedy club and a boxing exhibition. Accompanied by the screams, I had never seen a reaction like this before, it was truly the most unexpected experience in a theater ever.

Of course the film was a smash hit and became the talk of the town in the following days, weeks and even months. If you saw the film everyone kept asking you who won and boy was that subject to debate. The film did a great job at paying homage to the golden era of slashers as well as both franchises and made itself celebratory in that respect. 21 years later this movie is still a revered classic by slasher fans. No one who loved it will ever forget it and I’ll always remember Freddy Vs Jason being the most fun I had at the movies