Welcome to Day 2 of Spooky Season! I wasn’t sure whether or not I should give my two cents on this subject but I see it’s still being talked about 19 years later. I decided that if I don’t talk about it, it’s going to just stay on my mind, so for Day 2, I will be discussing people’s problem with Jason Voorhees’ weakness in Freddy vs. Jason and why I don’t believe it’s his real weakness at all. (SPOILER ALERT!!!)

So as we all know, when Jason was a kid, he drowned in Camp Crystal Lake. Since then, he’s had many moments where he either popped out of the lake to kill someone, or was defeated and drowned in the lake again. For eight films prior to Freddy vs. Jason, Jason has shown absolutely no fear of the lake or water in general, so why was he suddenly afraid of it in this movie?

Let’s not forget the only time that Jason shows any fear of water was in the dream world, in his own mind. Now, I believe our minds and our imaginations have the power to not only inspire fear but amplify it as well. We have the ability to have terrifying nightmares about things that don’t or wouldn’t scare us if we were awake.

I’m going to use myself as an example real quick. Where I live, we have a ton of grasshoppers just jumping around outside. Sometimes, I’ll walk into their jumping path and they’ll accidentally land on me. That never really bothered me, I’d just shake them off then continue with my day. Now, not too long ago, I had a dream where there was a grasshopper trapped in our car window and when I tried rolling the window down to let it fly outside, it ended up getting blown in and landing on my chest. It freaked me out so much, I forced myself awake. It was actually really funny but it scared the hell out of me at the time.

I’m definitely not an expert on nightmares, but it seems to me that even if Jason had a fear of water, it only impaired him in his own nightmare, where he viewed water as something much worse than it was. Hell, even IN Freddy vs. Jason, Jason wasn’t terrified of water in the real world. He was able to stand in the rain in the beginning of the film with no problem. Then when he and Freddy are pushed into the lake by an explosion, not only did Jason not scramble to get out, once he stabbed Freddy, he threw himself back into the lake and let himself sink down.

Water has always been a part of Jason’s life, either as his advantage or his demise. To me, it was never a weakness that stopped him being the killing machine we all know. I believe his real weakness is his own mind. It caused Jason to see water as something much more terrifying, it reminded him of what happened when he was a kid, and it caused him to show Freddy that fear and let him take advantage. I’d love to know your thoughts on the subject, let me know in the comments below!