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I guess we were lucky to get five good Freddy movies before the franchise finally shit the bed. In Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, there’s only one remaining teenager (Shon Greenblatt) in the neighborhood and Freddy uses him to gain access to a whole new town of victims, where a youth shelter worker (Lisa Zane) with a special connection to Freddy might hold the key to his demise. These two characters, along with a few other disposable teens, go back to Springwood — where all the murders have taken place — for a final confrontation with Fred Krueger (returning Robert Englund). Oh, and that final confrontation is in anaglyph 3D, if you have the right glasses for it.
Freddy’s Dead is far more surreal and comical than any previous Nightmare on Elm Street movie. The first half hour is especially unmoored, defying logic and the laws of science while it tries to justify its shaky premise. Cameos by Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold only underscore the film’s irreverent, circus-like nature. It’s very, very hard to take this film at all seriously because it’s just so fucking nutso. The last hour gets better, though. A sequence in which Freddy torments a deaf teen (Ricky Dean Logan) is a legitimately scary sequence and the most imaginative in the film. The final act also expounds a bit on Freddy’s backstory, which is always nice. (Look for Iggy Pop as Freddy’s dear old dad in a climactic flashback.) And, of course, Robert Englund certainly pulls his weight as the title character, a little funnier than usual, but no less menacing.
New Line Cinema gave the directing reigns to Rachel Talalay, a long-time employee for the studio but a first-time director. Talalay does a commendable job with scene staging and offers a lot of creative ideas to the execution, but her efforts don’t stop the film from looking incredibly cheap. Production values are not at the same level of the previous films. The ‘real world’ sets look just as phony as the ‘dream land’ sets, and all the exterior scenes are shot on unconvincing studio back lots. The casting, makeup, photography, and music (by Queen’s Brian May) are also steps down in quality. The 3D implemented in the final fifteen minutes may have been a draw back in 1991, but today it only adds to the film’s cheese factor.
Freddy’s Dead has its moments, but it’s the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie to disappoint me overall. New Line wanted to kill Freddy, and they got what they wished for — sort of. Freddy’s Dead ended the initial storyline that Wes Craven started in 1984. But we all know cinematic boogeyman never really die. Three years later, Craven would reboot the franchise with the ‘meta’, self-aware film, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.
With Lezlie Deane, Breckin Meyer (Clueless), Yaphet Kotto (Alien), and a cameo appearance from Johnny Depp, who made his acting debut in the original film.