Starring: Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Kelly Rowland

3.5 out of 10 stars

A lot – and I mean, a lot – of blood gets pumped into the new Freddy Vs. Jason in an effort to bring these two long-dead horror icons back to life, but to paraphrase the Bard, it's all a lot of sound and spurting signifying nothing. The particular idiot telling this tale is director Ronny Yu, who turns on the red waterworks full blast, so much so that by the end of the movie, both Freddy and Jason are reduced to little more than novelty lawn sprinklers, spurting arcs of red Karo syrup in every possible direction. Showing a fun eye towards horror movie appropriation in the beginning of the film, Yu descends into a literal bloodbath by the end of FvJ, giving audiences what they want, but only just barely.

Freddy Vs. Jason finds the Nightmare on Elm Street villain finally banished to eternal damnation, moping around hell like a B-list celebrity. Bemoaning the fact that he's been forgotten above all (never mind that eternal hellfire crap), he curses the successful efforts of parents to eliminate Freddy entirely from history (or at least the local newspaper archives), thus rendering him powerless. And because his strength lies in the fear of those alive and dreaming, Freddy tricks Jason of Friday the 13th fame into resurfacing and carving out a new niche of nightmares on Elm Street, just to remind everyone of how terrifying Freddy can be – and to get his name back out there, just like Shannen Doherty or Alec Baldwin. Never one to use a knife when a machete will do just nicely, Jason as usual overachieves and rediscovers his taste for butchery, irritating Freddy to no end. It all boils down to a vicious catfight, where Freddy unleashes his claws, Jason unsheathes his machete, and each invades the others' subconscious, making for not one but two climactic battles – one in Freddy's nightmares, the other at Camp Crystal Lake.

The dovetailing of the two mythologies is far from elegant but is still pretty smooth as far as horror movies go, and Robert Englund tears into his Freddy role with his usual gusto and leering humor; his strength was always in being preternaturally creepy and icky as opposed to just plain old murderous. The rest of the plot, however, is a regurgitated mixture of old horror movies with absurd plot devices thrown in, including a dream-suppressing drug called Hypnocil that's dangled about only to be snatched back. Slasher movie aficionados will get their jollies in the first half hour or so of FvJ, as screenwriters Victor Miller and Damian Shannon play fast and loose with the homages, from Halloween all the way through to Scary Movie, with a stop at Scream in between. But any fun had in playing "Guess the horror movie" (bonus points for the girl wearing a PJ Soles-style baseball hat and the shot-from-above shower scene a la Dressed to Kill) becomes quashed later on by less graceful appropriations, including a generically mysterious cornfield and a stoner dude channeling Jason Mewes' much funnier Jay of Kevin Smith movie fame.

Director Yu (once of The Bride with White Hair fame, now of Bride of Chucky ignominy) wisely stays away from the Friday the 13th motifs, which were, um, rather cookie-cutter at best, with their screaming teens and innumerable bisections. Sadly, though, he doesn't descend into the darkly humorous depths of the previous Nightmare on Elm Street films, the best of which delved deep into the characters subconscious for wickedly evil fun. Aside from a nice swipe at plastic surgery, where Freddy plays "Got your nose" with his switchblade fingers, these dream sequences are pretty ho-hum from the get-go, and certainly less than nightmare-worthy. Adding to the blah factor is an extremely unmemorable cast, led by Monica Keena (stand-in for Brittany Murphy) and Jason Ritter (stand-in for any male WB star – and yes, son of John Ritter), who can hardly begin to fill the shoes worn by any of the previous Elm Street B-list stars or even approach the game-for-anything cast of the first film (including Heather Langenkamp and Johnny Depp). Keena and Ritter are, in a sense, the true villains of the movie, as it's Jason and Freddy you root for to vanquish this irritating teen prey.

Of the victims-in-waiting, only Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child fame gets any energy going, thanks to a last-act harangue against Freddy's fashion style, complete with a crowd-pleasing Freudian comparison involving Freddy's fingertips and Jason's big, huge machete. Alas, she's just washed away with all the gallons of blood spilled in the efforts to resuscitate these long-dead characters. Oh, and if you laid money on who was going to win the battle, be prepared to do lots of explaining as to why you should collect your winnings, as the ending is, well, less than cut-and-dried.