Movie Reviews #43 - Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Plot: Freddy Kruger haunts the last of the Elm Street kids while also trying to terrorize a new city through his daughter.

Review: The Nightmare on Elm Street series has been a rough ride for me so far, but I never thought it could get this bad. Freddy’s Dead takes hammy acting to a whole new level of terrible. In the movie, a group of teenagers travel to Springwood to help one of them, who has amnesia, to remember what happened. For some reason, everyone in the town has become insane! The teacher is giving a class to no one, people are talking to empty rooms constantly spouting exposition and we are even “blessed” with cameos by Roseanne and Tom Arnold. These scenes are barely watchable. It’s like a bad dinner theater performance, although I’ve never seen any this bad.

            There are only 3 kills in this movie and they are all extremely stupid. The one where Breckin Meyer gets killed in a videogame, oh my god is it dumb. It was clearly written by someone who has never played a real videogame in their lives. The character is bouncing up in down all around the house while idiotic sounds effects go on. So very bad.

            There are only 2 good things in this movie. The first is we get an origin for Freddy Kruger. We see that he once had a wife a daughter and seemed like a fairly normal person. It could have been interesting if they explored it more. However, they explain where his power to haunt dreams comes from and that ruins everything. Turns out as he was about to be burned, these 3 demons that look like flying sperm granted him these powers. For what reason, who knows. This movie doesn’t even explaining how Freddy got resurrected after dying last movie, so I don’t expect them to explain this. The second good thing about this movie is Yaphet Kotto. He brings a veteran actor experience to everything. He’s also seemingly the only one with any intelligence. He figures very quickly what to do to kill and Freddy and you feel like he could have finished this whole thing off single handedly, who needs those stupid teens.

            If it hasn’t been obvious by now, I did not like this movie. If this was supposed to be the end of the series, then good bye. If this is the kind of stuff the filmmakers can come up with, then just put it to rest and let’s be done with it. But of course not, anyone who knows that a horror movie that claims to be the last never is.

Score: 3/10