Freddy vs. Jason: Critic Reviews

There are far less lively ways to spend a night at the movies.

This grunge match is far more horrible than horrifying.

Though not exactly John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, star-power marquee teaming is about all Freddy vs. Jason has.

A script was wanting for years, and still is.

This corpse defies reanimation.

Deeply, proudly unimaginative.

Screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift don't try all that hard to meld the respective series ... and director Ronny Yu's efforts to generate visual interest ... are overfamiliar as every other slasher trope.

Though a stickler might ask what's at stake in a fight to the death between two guys who are already dead, the hard-core fans aren't likely to be disappointed.

Nicely balancing mayhem and mirth, Yu keeps his film kicking. The action is lovingly lurid, and the laughs keep coming.

A goofy but occasionally fun novelty that's more enjoyable than it has any right to be.

The website is more entertaining than the movie.

Freddy vs. Jason succeeds as a guilty pleasure.

Director Ronny Yu loses energy when it shifts to the dumb teen protagonists, and the script faithfully wallows in cliches so ridiculous they border on Scary Movie territory.

A tediously ghastly genre pic.

Pitting the bad guys against each other merely recycles all the shtick we've seen before.

It's bloody, it's loud, it's gratuitous, and it's ridiculous. Sweet.

Once the novelty wears off, the latest movie feels just like every other -- an unrepentant gorefest with little personality or flavor.

It's more marketing concept than aesthetic, and problems inherent in both series -- like the fact the villains are indestructible -- are only multiplied.

Despite oblique references to Psycho and Children of the Corn, Freddy vs. Jason lacks the knowing wit needed to keep it afloat in an age when even the horror spoofs have been spoofed.

Unlike, say, the Scream movies, which playfully tweaked the conventions of the slasher sub-genre, the new film tends to serve them up '80s-style -- straight and bloody.

Only masochists need contemplate laying down good money on this atrocity.

Too much chatting, not enough chills.

Good concept, mediocre execution.

Witless, excessive and ultimately boring gore-a-thon.

It is downright depressing to think about all that vigorous cinematic artistry and expertise aimed so low.