Mike_Bracken's Full Review: Nightmare on Elm Street 2 - Freddy's Revenge
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge: New Line Cinema/ Media Home Entertainment Rating: USA: R/ UK: 18/ Australia: R
After the spectacular success of Wes Craven’s 1984 film, A Nightmare on Elm Street (particularly spectacular when one considers the ratio of return on investment), even the most naive fright film fan knew that a sequel couldn’t be far off. Of course, when trailers for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge started showing up on screens roughly a year later—well, not even the most optimistic of us held out any hope for the film. Factor in that Bob Shaye at New Line Cinema had chased away Craven (who’d not only directed the original, but also wrote it) and it seemed like we had all the ingredients for a cinematic disaster. And you know what? We were right.
There really aren’t enough adjectives in the English language to describe how awful this abortion of a film is. It’s a puerile exercise in teen exploitation that gleefully insults its intended audience with its rampant stupidity—who bought into this film? Who approved the script? Who on Earth hired Jack Sholder to direct? (although, before I completely rip into old Jack, I will point out that he directed the super cool 1987 cult sci-fi classic, The Hidden.) In short, what were the people at New Line Cinema thinking? Even though the rules of horror sequeldom dictate that any film that’s an even number in a series will be awful (a notable exception is Hellbound: Hellraiser 2) NOES 2 is in a special category all of its own.
The plot (what there is of one) focuses on Jesse (Mark Patton), a teenaged guy whose family has just moved into a new house on Elm Street—Nancy Thompson’s old house…the one where Freddy Krueger haunted her dreams. Right off the bat, Jesse starts having dreams about Freddy—but instead of wanting to kill Jesse, Freddy wants to possess him—that way, he can kill people in the real world. Jesse continues to act weirder and weirder as Freddy manipulates him whenever he falls asleep—leading Jesse to murder several individuals and question his sanity. Anyway, Freddy finally decides that living through this sniveling wimp isn’t good enough—and uses him as a portal into the physical world. Jesse’s trapped inside Freddy now, and only the love of his girlfriend Lisa (Kim Myers: Hellraiser: Bloodline) can save him. Of course, this then sets up another hokey twist ending so that you know there’ll be yet another sequel.
There are so many awful things to talk about in this film that I’m sort of at a loss as to where to begin. Jack Sholder’s direction is awful—it’s boring, pedestrian stuff that shows absolutely no artistic flourishes or any hint of a style. I’ve seen commercials with more inventive cinematography and camera movement. Even when the camera does move, it’s always in that boring, banal, predictable sort of way—meaning you can guess what the next shot will be before he actually shows it to you—and 99 times out 100, it’s going to be some cheesy jump scare scene that teenage girls tend to find frightening, but the rest of us sort of groan at. Craven’s film worked so well because he was a talented director who understood that the idea was to blur the lines between dream and reality. Sholder has no clue as to how to achieve this, and instead gives us a film that constantly looks low budget—but not in a good way.
Even more lame is the film’s script. Aside from the few mentions of Nancy (brought up when Jesse and Lisa discover her diary) this film has little in common with its predecessor—at least narratively speaking. The script has at least ten instances where you’ll find yourself laughing at the absurdity of the situation while you get annoyed that the people behind the film think you’re dumb enough not to notice or care that certain scenes don’t make sense. For example: In one sequence, Jesse wakes up and walks outside of his house. The next scene shows him walking into an S&M bar (with a half-opened shirt on, no less) and ordering a beer (never mind that he looks all of 14—no one even looks twice at him). As he pours his beer, his gym coach grabs his wrist. In the next scene, the coach (in a leather tank top, no less) is forcing Jesse to run laps, then tells him to hit the shower (mind you, this is all in the middle of the night—why exactly would the coach take him back to the school?) The coach ends up getting murdered, but the sequence makes no sense at all.
Even worse is what passes for "scary stuff" in the film. Jesse’s mother’s parakeets go crazy and fly about the room attacking dad before exploding (yes, exploding) from the heat. How menacing is an angry parakeet? Is anyone out there really spooked out by this scene? In another, the toaster catches fire—yet it’s unplugged. Whoooo—I almost had to turn on all the lights by this point.
The film’s central premise is flawed as well. In the first film, Freddy haunts the Elm Street kids through their dreams, killing them as they sleep. He’s invulnerable in the dream world--the only way to kill Freddy is to bring him out of the dream, into the physical world where he can suffer real damage. So, why would Freddy suddenly want to be in the physical world this time around?
The film’s acting is terrible too. Jesse is perhaps one of the most uninspiring protagonists in horror film history, someone we’d never consider as a potential threat to Krueger. Lisa is only slightly better, and the only reason I’ve ever found for people liking her is because she looks like a young Meryl Streep (I kid you not…I’ve heard this mentioned at least 10 times). Looks aside, she certainly doesn’t act like a young Meryl Streep. The rest of the cast is pretty forgettable as well. Clu Gallager camps it up big time, probably because he realized he was in a spectacularly awful movie from his first day on the set. Robert Englund returns as Freddy, and while he’s still playing the part straight, you can tell the de-evolution from frightening monster to wisecracking anti-hero is right around the corner.
So, the acting is weak, the script is terrible, the direction is terrible…about the only thing left that could salvage this movie are the special FX. Unfortunately, except for a few sequences, they’re not that special. The scene where Freddy bursts out of Jesse’s body (through his chest) is the one real standout. And even though it looks pretty fake near the end of the sequence, it’s still pretty good.
The only other scene that amuses me in this film is when Freddy crashes Lisa’s pool party. Freddy’s running around slicing through teens left and right, when one guy decides to be a hero and tries to "talk Freddy down" by telling him everything will be ok. Englund gives the kid a look, fires off a line, then guts him. Take that, you sensitive 80’s guys.
Ultimately, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is a film with no redeeming qualities. I pull it out once every few years and give it a watch, hoping that maybe it’ll get better with time, but it’s clearly not the case. It’s a shining example of why horror has been consigned to the ghetto of the film world, because it takes what was an intriguing and inspired film (the original) and mucks it all up by making a quick sequel designed to do nothing more than cash in on the success of the first film. If there’s one positive about NOES 2, it’s that it has nothing to do with the rest of the films. You can safely skip right over this one and move onto part three and not miss a thing. No one ever mentions this one in any of the later films. If there were a way to give this film zero stars, I would…but since there isn’t one will have to suffice. Skip this one, unless you’re a die-hard Freddy fan.
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