Freddy vs. Jason

When it comes to grudge matches, the one I'm looking forward to the most is a rematch between George W Bush and a Pretzel; it would probably make a better film than Freddy Vs Jason. Still, if two horror series' are failing, what better than to cut out the effort of making two separate films and just combine them into a single slanging match? I don't recall ever having seen any of the Nightmare of Elm Street or Friday the 13th films, I don't actually see the point of going to the cinema with the sole intent of being frightened. If I wanted to scare myself, I'd think of William Shatner naked, which, as you can imagine, is a lot cheaper and a lot more frightening. The Nightmare on Elm Street films have had a succession of different composers, perhaps the most notable being Christopher Young who scored the first sequel. Friday the 13th almost exclusively relied on the talents of Harry Manfredini and Jason's Theme from those scores makes a cameo appearance during Graeme Revell's.

I don't know if it's my imagination, but almost every other new score I review seems to be from a horror film and the one thing I almost always say about horror scores is that they are invariably less interesting on disc than they are in the film. Unfortunately, this applies to Freddy vs Jason which largely sounds like bits cobbled together from every Marco Beltrami, Elia Cmiral or Revell horror score ever written. There are the obligatory eerie, high strings, the occasional thumps to keep you awake and lots of discordant brass, but frankly, it's often not music, it's just sound effects done with an orchestra. Ten out of ten for sound design, but one out of ten for musicality. The aforementioned Jason's Theme is, I think, some weird, synthetically altered vocal effect that sounds like somebody sneezing slowly in a very large, echoey cave.

Fortunately, the action tracks are a little more interesting, with skittering synths that are a little more effective than the norm and tracks such as Jason Unmasked are modestly exciting. Despite my reservations about its listenability, I suppose it is impressive achievement to conceive some of the mixtures of synths and orchestra that Revell (and Beltrami in his scores) has come up with as it's quite a bizarre combination of sounds. Of course, it's entirely possible that the orchestral parts are written, performed and then Revell plays around with synth noises overlaying then randomly. Freddy vs Jason isn't exactly the worst modern horror score I've heard recently, but I'd still be hard pressed to recommend it. It's not exactly enjoyable (but then most horror scores, by their nature, aren't), doesn't really break any new ground and at times, is frankly irritating. For fans of the genre, it's a midline entry, but for everyone else, there are much better discs to invest in.