Freddy’s Dead: The
Final Nightmare. Holy shit. Why
did I fucking sit through all this shit for a second time (I
originally saw it when I was 10ish). The movie features a fake-son,
real daughter storyline and has a few interesting cameos. It does a
terrible job of world building and shits all over the continuity of
that universe. Basically, New Line, the production company that put
out all these movies, had more or less run the character into the
ground by this point with six movies in seven years, most of them
terrible. It was time to kill him off, so they thought.
There
was a lot of weird shit surrounding Freddy’s Dead.
Peter Jackson wrote an early script that feature a loser Freddy that
kids took sleeping pills to go fuck with him. This is what they went
with instead. The crew had also just come from working on Cry
Baby and the director had worked
extensively with John Waters. As a result of that, I’ve seen the
movie described as John Waters presents Freddy Krueger. We should be
so lucky.
This also really marks
the turn from quasi horror to straight up slap stick comedy. But it
ain’t funny. Freddy had become a joke. New Line staged a literal
public funeral for the character and the City of Los Angeles declared
the day before the movie’s release, September 12, 1991, “Freddy
Krueger Day.” Should have been dealing with the LAPD’s systemic
racism and gearing up for the soon to come Rodney King riots, I
guess, but what do I know.
Pros:
It’s corny enough that it is almost enjoyable. But not really. I
shan’t watch this again.
Cons:
Choppy as fuck. Shitty world building. Kills are weak. Freddy’s
death is uncreative.
Notes:
Opens with a kid on a plane. Is sort of freaking out as he doesn’t
like flying. Or heights. Lady next to him tells him not to be such a
pussy. She immediately gets sucked out of the plane. So does he
eventually. Falls forever. Hits his house. Wakes up in the house.
Looks out the window. The house is falling now. This exact scene
happens another time later on. It feels like it happens so many more
times than that. Freddy is flying around like the Wicked Witch of the
West. “I'll get you my pretty, and your little soul, too.” House
crashes into the ground. He’s fine though. Now he's running around.
Falls down this hill. He falls forever yelling like, “wah, oh,
woah, wowah,” so forth. Comes to a theater. Bob Shaye is the ticket
taker. Freddy hits him with a bus. Knocks him back into the real
world. Hits his head on a rock. Gets amnesia. Goes by John Doe for
the rest of the movie. There is a cutout of him in the dream world.
This is our setup. We are watching a cartoon.
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| Optional musical accompany: The Looney Tunes theme |
Meet
the cast of kids who live a few towns over in a group home. Deaf kid
named Carlos. Kickboxer (which is equated with kung fu) chick named
Tracy. Breckin Meyer, the dude from Road Trip and Clueless who is
that same stoner in this film as well. This social worker chick,
Maggie, who has Freddy the man dreams, it’s obvious from the
beginning it’s his daughter. Parker from Alien
who is a live-in doctor of some kind.
Hoping John Doe might
remember more about his past, Maggie and him road trip to Springwood
where Fredddy has killed all the kids. Breckin Meyer, Carlos, and
Tracy all snuck in the back of the van. Life in Springwood basically
revolves around the dead kids as everyone is going to fair and the
high school and such. Roseanne and Tom Arnold show up at the fair.
Roseanne freaks out. Is all, “I want my kids back,” and rubs her
head all over them. Tom is like, “uh, don't pay attention to her,
kids.” They are like, “uh, okay.”
Maggie and JD are off
to the high school while the others are supposed to go back to the
group home. They immediately get lost as they are living in some sort
of weird looping bubble. While they are driving around aimlessly,
Carlos is put in charge of the map. He falls asleep, of course. Still
dealing with the map like a champ though. Keeps unfolding and
unfolding until it fills the back. Once he gets to the center it
says, “You're fucked.” He wakes up. Tracy is like, “what the
hell does the map say.” Carlos retorts, “It says we're fucked,”
which was actually great.
Meanwhile,
over at Springwood High, Maggie and JD visit a history lecture that
is ongoing but without children in the classroom. Here Maggie looks
at all these newspaper clippings on the wall that are all child
murders. She is like, “huh, they happen every 10 years” which
doesn't make any sense. Here though, I was like, “wait, that is
sort of interesting. Maybe it's like It
where Pennywise is like forever old and comes back and kills or
whatever.” It's here that the history teacher is all, “time for
some Freddy 101, 'fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Freddy sailed the
ocean blue.'” My reaction is still like, “huh, that could be
pretty cool.” Then he goes on, “fourteen-hundred and
ninety-three, Freddy sailed across the sea.” Here I am like, “oh,
this stupid.” Yet he goes on, “fourteen-hundred and ninety-four,
Freddy came back for more.” Maggie acts like this is totally
normal.
We
get some kills around then. Everyone ends up at the Freddy house for
some reason which shockingly still for sale. Hearing aid kid, Carlos,
gets killed. It sucks. His head explodes when Freddy gives him an
evil hearing aid and scratches a chalkboard. He does it like such an
idiot. Looks like he is on ecstasy. Carlos disappears. Tracy is freaking
out. Breckin Meyer is high as balls on the couch. Tracy can't deal
with his incompetence and leaves. He passes out on the couch watching
a smashed TV. Johnny Depp pops up. Giving a PSA. “This is your
brain; this is your brain on drugs,” one. Freddy shows up at the
end and kills him. Says to Breckin Meyer, “let's trip out, man.”
It's lame. Sucks him into the TV and they are basically in this
fighting game against each other. This fucking scene. Straight up
cartoon. Total slapstick. Breckin Meyer is actually in the game while
Freddy plays it from outside. When jumps Breckin Meyer jumps he makes
that “boingy, boingy, boingy,” from cartoons as well as other
Looney Toons type noises. It's doing this shit that I tried to ignore
before where what he does in the dream happens in the real world. It
happened with Carlos too as he was walking up stairs in the dream
that weren't there IRL. It's obvious this can't be ignored at this
point as Breckin Meyer is boinging up to the ceiling and flipping
around and stuff. Here Freddy starts using all these Nintendo slogans
which they were apparently not thrilled about. While playing the game
with a joystick Freddy says, “Now I'm playing with power.” But he
sort of loses to Breckin Meyer that when he whips out the “power
glove” which was a product Nintendo really had at the time. With
that he is able to murder Breckin Meyer, finally. Oh course he says
dumb shit like “great graphics” and “I beat my high score.”
Lame. While this happens, IRL, Breckin Meyer jumps down a flight of
stairs and falls into a bottomless hole at the bottom. Maggie is
standing right there but puts forth no effort to save him. This is
the point I ask myself, why am I watching this shit?
At some point Tracy
kicks Freddy in the crotch and he gets a whole vendetta thing going
with her. Freddy has a lot going on here. Also find out that Maggie
is Freddy's daughter, which has been so telegraphed. Kills John Doe
in a replay of that house falling scene, then Freddy sort of like
possesses Maggie. Not this shit again. We also keep hearing this song that irritatingly similar to "Mars, The Bringer of War but is not in fact that song. Feels almost over but there
are 35 minutes left.
Back at the group home
no one remembers the people that died even though there are like half
a dozen people there. The doctor though, he can control his dreams
and remembers. Cool. Maggie finds out she was adopted for real this
time. Didn't this already get confirmed. She starts getting
flashbacks of childhood when Freddy was raising her. She also
remembers him killing her mom by repeatedly hitting her head on a
tree. The dream becomes real and she is all like, “you can't leave
Springwood.” But through some loophole where he entered her earlier
he can now. Says to her “Every town has an Elm Street,” which
based on the seven different cities I have lived is true in my
experience.
Freddy gets in Tracy's
dream. She was sexually abused by her dad and Freddy uses that
against her. It is low, even for Freddy. Freddy and her get it on. He
says to her “Kung fu this, bitch,” as you'd expect, but she
lives. Gets in the doctor's dream, too. This is the first time I can
remember him getting into someone's head that was past the early 20's
age range. Freddy cartwheels about the room and kung fus him. It's
weird. He then cuts off his fingers again. Must really like this
effect. Just as dumb as when they did it in the original. The doc
rips off a piece of his sweater. Tracy and Maggie wake him up. He has
the sweater. They get the idea to bring him into the real world and
kill him “for good.” This is the most inconsistent universe. Just
roll with it I guess. Best not to think too much about it because
it's dumb.
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| Making the movie lamer |
They work 3D glasses
into the plot. Maggie uses them in the dream world somehow. I don't
know. The point was that when she put them on, the movie turned 3D
when you watched it in the theater. They have a lot of just obvious
perspective shit to use for the 3D. Maggie somehow gets in Freddy's
dreams, what, and we start seeing what he dreams about. We see him
getting taunted at school for being a fucking sociopath and killing
animals and shit. Yeah, fuck that kid. Now we see Freddy in high
school. Alice Cooper is Freddy's adopted dad. He beats him for some
reason. Whips off his belt and smacks him over the chest, saying
“it's time to take your medicine, boy.” Freddy laughs and
responds with the obligatory “thank you sir, may I have another”
line from Animal House. We eventually get to where the towns
folk burn Freddy to death. Earlier in the movie Freddy talks about
how demons came to him and offered him eternal life if he kills kids
in their dreams. Here we see that happen. You'd it would provide some
detail. Maybe at the very least explain some of what they are about
and shit. Nurp. When Freddy is on fire the shittiest CGI pieces of
shit like swim up to him and pretty much verbatim say “hey, wanna
live forever and kill kids? Then let us inside you.” He says ok and
there you have it.
Eventually we get to
the end, finally, and they pull Freddy into the real world and
finally fucking kill him in the most absurd way possible: they stab
him with a stick of dynamite and it blows his head off. There is so
much horrible CGI in this ending it is incredible. You may think you
know shitty CGI. You know nothing without seeing this movie. And that
is it. So ends the run of shitty Nightmare on Elm Street movies...
Just kidding! There are three more! One is actually good though and
one is a reboot. But you get what I mean.
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| Visual representation of what I mean |
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