The “terrible” movie nobody was able to stop Stephen King from watching: “I’ll be first in line”
For whatever reason, nobody can convince a cinemagoer otherwise when they’ve got their heart set on watching a movie they know will suck. Whether it’s affection for an actor, director, or franchise, expectations are set suitably low, and nobody can convince them to stay home. It’s a feeling Stephen King is familiar with, which didn’t stop him from declaring that he’d be first in line.
It’s a similar phenomenon to how viewers persevere with their favourite TV shows, even when they’ve jumped the shark or fallen off a cliff: having invested countless hours and years of their lives into following the story, they’re simply too deep to abandon the series before it reaches a conclusion.
That’s why the never-ending onslaught of superhero flicks, horror films, reboots, remakes, and sequels continues to make money despite the law of diminishing returns being in full effect. They were good once, and even though it’s a remote possibility, maybe they’ll conspire to be that good again, even if it rarely happens.
Funnily enough, that was the argument King made. As a lifelong horror fan who built his career on the genre, he’d seen every entry in the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street sagas since their respective launches, and at no point did he think 2003’s long-awaited crossover would be a solid work of cinema.
And yet, even though he knew Freddy vs Jason was a desperate throw of the dice made by a studio running out of ideas to monetise two of its most iconic characters, nobody could stop him from being there on opening day. “Schmucks like me keep going to see them,” he reasoned. “And why? Because the fear generated by a good horror picture is a drug, and as any junkie will tell you, you go on chasing the high long after the high is gone.”
It’s a fairly bleak way of putting it, but not inaccurate. “When it comes to horror franchises, the second-to-last gasp is always the combo movie,” King wrote in Entertainment Weekly. “And this summer we have, for better or worse, reached that point with Freddy vs Jason. And I’ll be first in line. I mean, in my heart I know it’s gonna be terrible, but I’ll still be there.”
That’s a feeling many folks will identify with, because at no point did Freddy vs Jason look anything other than risible. And yet, for the exact reasons King listed, it became the highest-grossing film in either mass murderer’s back catalogue because the prospect of seeing them duke it out was irresistible to the core audience.
“Everyone who goes will be like me, forking over for the ticket while knowing that the very idea is ludicrous,” he acknowledged before describing the movie’s existence as “a setup job only a studio accountant could love.” King did outline his hopes that “maybe it’ll be good,” but it wasn’t.
Little did he know that it would be the last time Robert Englund played his signature role, or the final mainline chapter in the Friday the 13th saga before both franchises were rebooted and remade. It was the end of an era in a way, just not a very entertaining one.
