Why I like Freddy Vs. Jason

Why I like Freddy vs. Jason

1) I first asked Kane Hodder about Freddy vs. Jason while he made an appearance with Linda Blair at some local Halloween carnival. I'd just gotten into horror in a big way, and Jason Voorhees was my big heeeero. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday had just come out an the film ended with Freddy Krueger's gloved hand reaching up from hell to retrieve the iconic hockey mask. I was all of eleven years old and a lifetime of superhero books engrained a love of the superfight. Hodder said that the film was in development, but it didn't come out until well after I graduated high school.  I wasn't disappointed.

2) I'm ultimately a Jason guy. Jason is my Frankenstein. He's ultimately pitiable, if you're willing to be reaaaaally generous about his origin story. Freddy is fun, but he's a harder guy to like. He's the bully. The whole child molestation thing also doesn't help much.

3) I got really into following the development of the movie on the internet. Multiple scripts had been written, some with really farcical ideas on how the two characters should battle. They finally turned in a script that made neither slasher the "good guy" but gave them plausible reasons to come into conflict. The movie ultimately feels more like a Nightmare film than a Friday film, but it works, in it's own overly complicated way.  It's perhaps a little too invested in tying the mythos of both movies together, but it also understood Jason's appeal. They knew he has a big, dumb, lost kid gone bad. 

4) Freddy vs. Jason isn't particularly scary per se but it has some astonishing nightmarish images, in particular Mark's nightmare visit from his dead brother. The film bears the distinct touch of legendary Hong Kong director Ronny Yu. I got into pre-takeover Hong Kong action cinema after seeing John Woo's Hard Boiled and I loved Yu's wild fantasy film The Bride With White Hair. Yu works in vivid colors and operatic fights, which made him ideal for the FvJ comic book battles.

5) A lot of the plot is actually pretty clunky and the lead characters come off as more weird than anything else, but the set pieces are cool. Krueger's boiler room looks like a nightmarish hellscape, the flashback scenes of Camp Crystal Lake establish the brutality we've long suspected was part of Jason's childhood, and the portrayal of Freddy's corruption of Jason's mother all flesh out the mythology of both characters brilliantly. 

6) Say what you will about everything that came before, the final fight between Freddy vs. Jason does not disappoint. It's one part pro-wrasslin', one part superhero battle, with a dash of Hong Kong wire work for flavor. They ditched Hodder, the best Jason actor, over stuntman Ken Kirzinger. Kirzinger towers over Robert England, and they make a great visual contrast. The battle nearly tears Crystal Lake in two, and the addition of the nearby construction site gives them a bunch of stuff to hit each other with. 

7) Jason wins. I don't care about the final knowing wink to the audience, there's one guy walking out of the lake at the end of the movie. 

Conclusion: It's often said that the death of a monster is either parody or fighting other monsters. Freddy vs. Jason obviously falls into the grand tradition of all the great Frankenstein/Dracula/Wolfman mashup. Both Freddy and Jason had their final pre-Platinum Dunes hurrah and it fulfilled every boyhood dream of mine.         

      

Why I like Ginger Snaps

-->

Why I like Ginger Snaps

1)  The movie appeals to me in the same way that Daria does. Both are about brainy outsiders who are actually estranged from their peers through social awkwardness while simultaneously being too cool for school. 

2) The fake murder/suicide photo game is perfect characterization for the two sisters: it's off-puttingly creepy, immature, charming, and ultimately harmless. Most people with some degree of intelligence and morbidity probably remember playing games like that, and it introduced us to the sister's inner world and their boredom. 

3) I've never really seen a character transform into a werewolf the way that Ginger does. The process is slow and predominantly psychological, augmenting the impatience that laid dormant in her personality while amping up her sexual frustration into something predatory. 

4) There's a real sadness to the movie as the sister's bond is torn apart by Ginger's change. The pair have lived in their own world for so long that we sympathize with Brigitte's heartbreak when Ginger appears to be breaking away and growing up.

5) I feel like there are limits to how much I can appreciate this film, having never lived in a woman's body. But the film uses the lycanthropic transformations that Ginger undertakes as a painful study in puberty. Oh adolescence. 

6) Their mom is a badass. When she thinks that Ginger murdered someone, her first thought is to take the girls, ditch her husband, and make for Canada. 

7) Ginger Snaps has one of the saddest, quietest final images in all of horror cinema.     

8) The tail-cutting scene was one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen. A lot of torture porn makes the mistake of disconnecting the violence from the characterization. By the time Ginger starts growing the tail, we've come to care about her. That makes the violence all that more horrific.

9) The werewolf story has a lot of sexual subtext, and Ginger Snaps exploits it to the fullest. Ginger seems to mature and come into her own as the lycanthropic infection takes hold. She acts out her confusion and fear through sexually-charged interactions with males, often ending poorly for the men or teenage boys in question. Most of the guys in question are predatory scumbags, and it's an interesting inversion of what many women undergo when they become subjected to that kind of attention. 

10) There are a lot of opportunities where hope seems possible. The infection initially doesn't seem so bad, Ginger seems to be fighting it, a cure is discovered, it seems like things could work out. Lycanthrope is often a terminal disease in movies, and we always desperately hoping for a happy ending to these stories, even as the hope slowly slips away.

Conclusion: Ginger Snaps is my favorite werewolf movie because it used of familiar horror tropes to tell a compelling story about characters I cared deeply about. I saw it towards the end of my adolescence and related to Brigitte and Ginger's struggles. It walks that fine line a lot of good horror movies walk between being scary and being sad, and it's one the best horror films I've ever seen.