Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is the worst movie of all time

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.

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.

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. 

Visual representation of what I mean

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