Banished to hell, killer Freddy Kruger discovers the soul of Jason Voorhees and dispatches him back into the real world to Elm Street. Freddy has been forgotten by the residents and his power to kill within the dreams of teenagers have diminished to nothing. However with Jason murdering at will, the main suspect on everyone's lips (and in their dreams) is Freddy Kruger. With his power returning, Freddy starts appearing to a whole new generation of teenagers to kill them. Problem is, Jason is much more powerful than he predicted and soon it becomes a battle between the two men for the chance to kill the Elm Street teenagers. Nightmare on Elm Street 8 or Friday the 13th 11, whatever you want to call it you pretty much know what you are going to get. What that is is a basic narrative that sees a bunch of teenagers being picked off in a variety of gory ways until they work out how to stop it this time. The hook on this occasion is that the two horror franchises that essentially do the same thing come together. For the majority of the film what we get is just this – scenes where the teenagers are gorily killed one by one by one of the two killers. If this is what you are here for then it does deliver this but just don't expect it to be genuinely scared or suspenseful. Instead it is just the basics being done. The only thing that might make it different is the fact that, after an hour of milling around, we do actually get down to what the title says – Jason and Freddy fighting one another. I suppose for fans it is the equivalent with having great sex or breaking a record or something but for me I just saw it as an excuse for a big slug-fest between these two characters and it doesn't really ever manage to be exciting – just noisy. The cast do what is asked of them in so much as they run around screaming before dying. Keena, Ritter, Marquette and others don't really make an impression. Indeed the only one of the non-monster cast that did catch my eye was Kelly Rowland but that was only because it was a surprise to hear the self-proclaimed "Christian" swearing like a sailor and being homophobic (although having seen her practically naked in videos working her body like a stripper, I probably shouldn't be highlighting this part of her hypocrisy). Englund does his usual stuff to good effect and Kirzinger lumbers around in the way that he does. Their interactions do make the film better than it would otherwise have been – but do not mistake that for me saying the film is Citizen Kane – it is not. A typically gory entry in both film series at the same time. Fans will lap it up and then flood to the message board to fight over this and other possible grudge matches while the majority of people will be glad that we got one film to contain both of them rather than them having one each. In terms of content, it does what you expect – lots of gore, no characters, no narrative and nothing of interest for those that have grown past the age where horror is just special effects.

See other user reviews