THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!
This film really confuses me. I don’t quite know what to think about it. It isn’t confusion in the same way as A Nightmare on Elm Street confused me. Everything seems established a bit better in Freddy’s Revenge and some things make a lot more sense. No, I’m confused because I’m not sure to what extent I like or dislike this film. I suppose actually writing about it will help me get my thoughts around it.
For one, I’m pretty sure the ending of the first film has been retconned to “everyone died and Nancy went insane” but that isn’t made entirely clear. That at least gives a simple ending to the first film and allows the events of the original to make more sense. Not sure if I like this, though.
Then we have the fact that our main character, Jesse (Mark Patton), seems to be slowly getting taken over from the dream world so that Krueger (Robert Englund) can commit murders through him. That should bring in some more psychological horror aspects as Jesse doesn’t know when he will become a violent killer. But Jesse never seems entirely phased by this. Only when he is changing into Krueger or just killed someone does he actually seem scared at all. Not only this, but it also means nothing really happens in the dream world. This makes the first film being about killing the kids in their dreams almost pointless.
However, it does lead to some creepy scenes and does build a little bit of tension. It is also an interesting concept, not being able to control oneself and becoming some violent supernatural killer. But this never comes up often enough, with Jesse being mostly himself throughout the film. There’s little to no tension. Thankfully, it does build up to a scene of violence and death, but this is all too little too late. And at the end Krueger is defeated by the power of love (cop out) and then everyone acts like nothing ever happened.
Oh, and then Freddy’s hand bursts out some girl’s stomach and the school bus goes careening off somewhere. THE END!
I’m going to go ahead and say I am not going to look forward to the ends of these films. I think they will all turn out disappointing.
But I have to say that overall I do find that this film does some things a bit more right than the original. It’s more clear cut, less confusing and a lot less ridiculous. Nonetheless, I think I have to say that I don’t really like this film. Barely anything happens in it and the overall climax was a bore, just to have some lovey-dovey nonsense come along and ruin what should be some epic ending, what with Freddy running around and all.
Which, to be honest, was another problem. Freddy getting out properly and doing things ruins the supernatural feel of the character. He no longer just has power in dreams and the outside world to a lesser extent. No, now he just goes right ahead and kills people in the real world. In trying to make a better story they seem to have ended up with a less creepy villain.
So I guess I’m less fond of this film. What I liked the most about the previous movie, the villain, has been stripped down to just a normal killer, in a way. The pacing of this film was terrible, at times plot points would go nowhere and there's the tiniest amount of tension or suspense. I realise now I have focussed mainly on the plot, but not what happens within the film. This is mainly because nothing happens in the film, but there is a bare bones plot in there somewhere. It’s hard to talk about a film like that.
Hopefully there will be more to talk about in the later films, be it good or be it bad!
Final Verdict: 3/10
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