When movie characters are primarily known as indomitable killers, it’s only natural for fans to speculate on who would win a fight between them. Now, two of the most iconic, Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th and Michael Myers from Halloween, have come up against each other in a fan trailer for the totally-should-already-exist mashup Jason vs. Michael: Friday the 31st.
The trailer is a re-edit of a previous work, but this version is far more seamless. Switching between music and dialogue from entries in each franchise, the two fuse together effortlessly, which is unsurprising given that Friday the 13th drew directly from the template that Halloween laid down, resulting in movies with multiple stylistic similarities. Principally, the trailer captures the air of consistent dread that permeates each narrative, with judicious editing suggesting the two killers’ interaction, while moments where they actually share the frame come from a fan film.
Michael, depending on which continuity you choose to believe, is either the embodiment of remorseless evil, a physical form that has the shape of a person, but eroded of everything that makes someone human until all that remains is a soulless husk, or he’s the result of a curse placed on him as a child that compels him to kill his entire bloodline in sacrifice to a druidic cult, conferring immortality until his task is complete, whereupon he’ll be destroyed by the implacable rage driving him. Jason, meanwhile, is a hulking madman who repeatedly survives his own death and visits proxy vengeance upon the teenagers who bullied him as a small child. Most significantly, both are seemingly unstoppable juggernauts, meaning something has to give when the two clash, but in which direction is anyone’s guess.
Of course, the concept of two masked slashers battling it out has already been officially experimented with in the risible Freddy vs. Jason, where the Camp Crystal Lake Killer instead faced off with Elm Street’s notorious Bastard Son of Hundred Maniacs. However, Freddy Krueger is a different type of villain, stalking victims in their dreams by invoking their fears, whereas Michael and Jason are purely physical threats who seemingly nothing can take down, which would result in a different dynamic and one far more relentless.