Editorials
‘Freddy vs. Jason’: The Long Road to the Crossover Event’s Arrival On the Big Screen
No matter how you feel about Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, the final moment which sees Freddy Krueger’s glove burst out of the ground to retrieve Jason Voorhees’ mask and bring it back down to hell was an all-timer. With the two horror icons dominating the ‘80s and taking their final bow in the early ‘90s (well, until Jason X in 2001), with The Final Friday releasing in 1993 and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare in 1994, the idea that these two horror juggernauts would be hanging out in hell together was a fitting end to their reign. That was something fans really wanted to see. The idea to bring these two together in a crossover event had already been tossed about for years by the time The Final Friday released, though.
It wasn’t until 2003 that fans finally got their wish, for better or worse, with one of horror’s biggest events in Freddy vs Jason.
The road to getting this crossover film made was hell. Navigating the treacherous waters of licensing was arduous and long, with New Line owning the rights to A Nightmare on Elm Street series and Paramount owning the Friday the 13th franchise. Both tried to work together to make a Freddy vs Jason movie in 1987 but couldn’t come to an agreement. When license rights lapsed on Friday the 13th, New Line acquired them. While a major step in the right direction, that was only the beginning. New Line still had to find an exec that was interested in producing horror, which wasn’t an easy task at the time. Enter New Line senior VP of production Stokely Chaffin, who’d previously produced I Know What You Did Last Summer and was a huge horror fan. Rights and financial backing in place meant the next big hurdle to cross; settling on a script and a director. Both proved to be just as daunting as the long years it had already taken in the journey to bring Jason and Freddy together.
Chaffin agreed to meet with anyone interested in the project, resulting in 60 different meetings in the search for a director. She either found directors who were qualified but had never seen any of the franchise films, or super fans who had zero experience. She sought out director Ronny Yu, who had helmed The Bride with White Hair and Bride of Chucky, twice before he accepted. The script was an entirely different story, with around 12 different writers and 17 drafts in existence at various points. And boy were there some wacky story ideas involved. Eventually, screenwriting duties fell to Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, and David S. Goyer was brought in after to condense their two-and-a-half-hour feature into something much tighter and brisker in pace.
Yu’s approach to Freddy vs Jason drew from unexpected inspiration; Rocky Balboa’s fight with Apollo Creed. He wanted to recapture the rawness of that epic battle and unleash Jason and Freddy on each other. The more blood the better, which is the best possible approach with these two horror titans. This really was the long-awaited, main heavyweight event between two beloved horror icons, and the climactic battle mostly ignores the fresh meat in favor of Freddy and Jason trading blows.
The weak spot of the film was the narrative involving the teens, and some of the kills were downright goofy (Freddy possessing stoner Freeburg as a caterpillar?), but they were all second fiddle to the true stars of the film: Freddy and Jason. Yu never lost sight of the film’s purpose, and that was to deliver on horror’s biggest sporting event ever. Robert Englund and Ken Kirzinger (the tallest Jason ever at 6’6”) received top billing. The original ending focused on Lori (Monica Keena) and Will (Jason Ritter), but Yu didn’t like it because it wasn’t focused on Freddy and Jason. Trimming that out was a smart move. This was Robert Englund’s last performance as Freddy Krueger and having him close out the film with a wink to the audience was a perfect final bow.
In the 15 years since Freddy vs Jason made huge waves at the box office, a few have tried to capture the same success. Alien vs Predator followed a year later and tried again with their sequel in 2007. Alien vs Predator didn’t reach the same heights because they spent too much time with the human characters, involving them directly in the battle fans really came to see. Even Japan’s Sadako vs Kayako, while successful, took too long to get to the main event.
It’s now been 15 years since the biggest horror crossover event arrived in theaters. It didn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s okay. Because Freddy vs Jason is exactly what the title suggests; a major sporting event between two titans maiming, filleting, and slaughtering each other, spilling gallons of blood in the process.
That’s all it needed to be.
Before director John Fawcett and writer Karen Walton introduced the world to the Fitzgerald sisters, werewolves had all but vanished from the big screen. In fact, the last theatrical offering of lycanthropic horror, prior to Ginger Snaps, was 1997’s An American Werewolf in Paris. And as one might recall, the reviews for that movie weren’t so hot. So, clearly, the genre was in desperate need of fresh eyes.
Ginger Snaps first emerged some years after what many deem to be the peak of Canadian horror: the 1970s and ‘80s. Or as cinephiles like to call it, the “tax shelter era”. Yet unlike a lot of the movies produced back then (and even now), this cult classic isn’t vague about its story’s location. Rather than passing off the Great White North as the U.S., Ginger Snaps was squarely set in Canada. The fictional suburb of Bailey Downs is indeed an amalgam of multiple places, but nonetheless, it is 100% Canadian.
In an editorial titled “What Canadian Horror Tells Us about Our Deepest Fears”, journalist Harrison Mooney related deep-seated Canadian anxieties to Canadian horror cinema. Although Ginger Snaps wasn’t one of the mentioned titles, Mooney’s notion that Canadian horrors feed on homegrown fears is still applicable. Ginger Snaps is a movie that very much deals with “the loss of control” and “the violent outsider”, as well as the Canadian land itself. That last point—“colonialism has traumatized even the settlers”—is most apparent in the prequel, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning; however, it can also pertain to the trilogy’s other entries.
Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins in Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.
Before reaching that period prequel, and after first getting to know the two Fitzgerald sisters, the Ginger Snaps trilogy touches down in an urban locale (really Edmonton). Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed vaguely picks up where the original movie left off, with Brigitte (Emily Perkins) going things alone after losing Ginger (Katharine Isabelle). The cozy-turned-creepy atmosphere of Bailey Downs has also been swapped out with a comprehensively bleaker one as Brigitte endures more than just another harsh Canadian winter.
As with any other sequel intent on not repeating things, Ginger Snaps 2 chronicles a different struggle for its main character. The affliction remains the same as before, but the fight to stave it off is unique to Brigitte Fitzgerald. The movie fully understands that no two werewolves should ever be the same. And ensuring that distinct transformation was a newcomer named Megan Martin. What the screenwriter lacked in sheer experience, she made up for in wild ideas.
After passing the directorial reins to Brett Sullivan, the first movie’s editor, Fawcett stayed on as a producer. Walton’s characters were left in capable hands with Martin, who more than delivered on that potential for familial grief entwined with detachment issues. Naturally, one might worry that Ginger’s demise dampens the possibility of a good story; she is the namesake, after all. On the contrary, Sullivan and Martin found a clever, if not familiar, way to keep Ginger around, all without sacrificing character development for the sequel’s actual protagonist.
Tatiana Maslany in Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.
While Ginger Snaps is one of many movies that enthusiastically dispels the myth of safety in the suburbs, Ginger Snaps 2 leans into the idea of cities being crime-ridden and dangerous. Of course, the threat lurking around every corner here is not that forward, but an otherwise harmless librarian (Brendan Fletcher) who was hoping to score Brigitte’s number. No, it’s that mysterious werewolf who has taken a liking to the main character—and then continues to stalk her throughout the story.
As if the literal beast on her tail wasn’t an ample enough reminder of her own looming fate, Brigitte is also being viciously haunted by her past. That come-and-go-as-she-pleases specter of Ginger, a manifestation born from grief, unresolved trauma, and monkshood abuse, fluctuates between comforting and cruel. She can either soothe little sis during her syringe sessions, or she can sardonically read her as no one else can.
While it is certainly Isabelle playing the ghost, that depiction is less Ginger and really more Brigitte. This damning evidence of the Fitzgerald girls’ codependency problem—not even death can put an immediate stop to it—shows how Brigitte can only be honest with herself by filtering her thoughts through a likeness of Ginger. Ultimately, though, there is a breakthrough moment for Brigitte; it’s one where she can stop living in her sister’s shadow and, at least for a few minutes, relinquish her overwhelming survivor’s guilt.
Emily Perkins in Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.
Werewolf stories are often psychological by nature. Scarcely ever do humans seem to willingly give in to that bone-breaking transformation—that complete lack of self-control. This internal conflict has been there since the beginning of the genre, and movies like Ginger Snaps 2 run away with the concept. So while setting the sequel inside a rehab center feels a little on the nose, that location offers a potent playground for the characters. It’s also one most befitting of gritty, post-Y2K horror.
With its emphasis on psychology, the sequel is constantly studying its characters and how they tick. Brigitte obviously gets the most extensive analysis; on top of Ginger’s intermittent commentary, the Happier Times staff gives its latest in-patient a clinical, and sometimes amusing, evaluation. In addition to Brigitte’s review are these less spoken assessments of the supporting characters. These particular deuteragonists, such as that deceptively clean-cut orderly (Eric Johnson) who trades drugs for sex, are key components in the movie’s overall sense of weirdness.
Of all those offbeat side characters who make Ginger Snaps 2 an unusual, not to mention worthwhile, viewing, Tatiana Maslany’s Ghost is the most influential. Almost always doing or saying something that provokes unease, Ghost is fascinating enough to warrant her own movie. It would be hard to convince anyone this petite, blonde, and twisted teen is lovable, yet that growing instability of hers becomes a surprising source of entertainment in the sequel. So, yes, this movie absolutely found someone more frightening than a werewolf, and her name is Ghost.
Without getting caught up in any arguments about which of the first two movies is better, Ginger Snaps 2 is an impressive follow-up. Fully doing its own thing and not trying to catch lightning in a bottle twice, the second movie is tailor-made for cinephiles who crave bold and very strange sequels.
Emily Perkins in Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.
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