A new family moves into the house on Elm Street, and before long, the kids are again having nightmares about deceased child murderer Freddy Krueger. This time, Freddy attempts to possess a teenage boy Jesse to cause havoc in the real world, and can only be overcome if the boy’s sweetheart can master her fear.
I’m not sure what to say about this one. As it’s an Elm Street movie, of course I enjoyed it, but I had some many issues with it that I just couldn’t love it like the other entries including Parts 5 and 6, sure they were awful but at least they stayed true to Wes Craven’s original concept.
What are my issues? Where to begin? The casting; I just didn’t really feel these ‘teens’ were of the same quality as the ones in the original or any of the further sequels, I mean Mark Patton (Jesse) and Kim Myers (Lisa) did a decent job, as did Rob Russler (Grady) but they were no Langenkamp and Depp!
I had a massive issue with the story; all I am going to say here is Freddy (the always brilliant Robert Englund) in the real world? Do me a favour. If you want to make a horror icon instantly less iconic and scary, then follow the template of Elm Street 2 and take away the one thing that made Freddy a true villain, I won’t say anymore.
What else? Oh, Freddy’s make-up, he just looked so different to the original, so much so he felt like a different character to me, when you change the eye colour and bone structure (they were going for the look of a male witch) of a character they of course will look vastly different and that didn’t work for me.
Finally and yes, I am going to mention it, this movie was so obviously gay, it was untrue. I did read somewhere that is was supposed to be sub-text, but I don’t think director Jack Sholder got that particular memo and did his best to bring all of the sub-text to the fore, which again, did this particular film no favours for me and just took it away from the horror genre.
As for the film itself, as I say, it just didn’t quite feel like a Nightmare On Elm Street film, but I guess, I am saying this with the power of hindsight having been able to watch parts 3 and 4 straight after this and maybe as a sequel at that time, it was felt it could work.
My main bug bear was that Freddy used Jesse to do his killing for him, so you don’t get to see Freddy do his thing complete with glib one-liner, which was of course rectified in parts 3 and 4 and then taken way to far in parts 5 and 6.
As a concept on paper, it probably sounded pretty cool and different to the original – however, it just felt like a very rushed effort to cash in on the surprising popularity of Mr. Krueger – something that ex-New Line CEO Bob Shaye has since admitted.
As a fan of all things Freddy, I managed to enjoy this, the kills are mediocre but Freddy’s entry into the real world via Jesse is exceptional and was groundbreaking back in 1986.