Freddy Vs Jason had been in the talks for a long time, ever since I think 1985 or so. Shit got in the way as it always does and they kept spinning their wheels while releasing single movie sequels for both the Nightmare and the Jason franchise. They had this cool idea though, of having Jason fight someone who was actually a challenge, since all of the time he was going after teenagers and a few adults. It wasn't exactly the most fair fights.
Enter the idea of a woman with vague mental powers, and basically it's Jason versus Carrie. Carrie in this case is actually Tina, a young woman who as a child had her father die in Crystal Lake. She returns to Crystal Lake early into the movie and in a moment of sad lament, uses her powers. Her powers have the unexpected result of raising Jason from the dead, having been left chained to the bottom of the lake in Part VI. Jason is in full on kill mode, and the whole kill cycle begins anew.
This movie was not the best entry into the franchise. Online they make mention of all the violence cut out of the film, all the blood that would get slashed from our viewing pleasure, and what this results in is a largely bloodless movie. There is of course the sleeping bag death, which is cool, and there's head crushing and machete slashing and such, but it does seem a bit calm compared to say Part IV.
Tina as a young heroine is fine. She spends most of the movie in a state of waffling between doing what she wants and doing what the therapists and such want for her. Her therapist has a side story that maybe he's been exploiting Tina's powers for unknown reasons, and Tina's mom is in her corner most of the movie. Eventually Jason and Tina are in the same area, and it all results in a final showdown, which is pretty fun, but ends in a weird way.
This would start the Jason series on a really bad, almost done-for-comedy series of follow-ups. With this one, Manhattan, Hell, and Jason X, these four movies in a row are pretty bad, pretty much bottom of the barrel, and very much part of what gave slashers a bad name. When I was younger, Scream was almost the only slasher someone was allowed to like. If you liked a slasher besides that, or even horror, you were probably made fun of. That was the fun of being young around the year 2000. It wasn't until later that horror became cool again, which I think was originated by Scream but then further legitimized when torture porn became a thing. Why torture porn would "legitimize" horror is anyone's guess, but that's the fun of being 13-21 or so, "gross crap" was/is cool.
This one was also not fun in any of the ways some of those later Jason movies could be. It didn't have the comedy in it, it didn't reach for anything that made it self aware. It was just an unexplained girl with mental powers and Jason in full on zombie mode, and by the numbers kills. Which I guess gives it a low point for the series with 1.5 stars.
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