Review of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) by Elan K — 09 Oct 2016

"Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare" is directed by Rachel Talalay and marks the end of an era for this version of A Nightmare on Elm Street as the following 2 films would take the franchise in a whole new direction.

So after the last 2 outings ended up being mediocre at best, how does "The Final Nightmare" really stack up? Well first off this film takes place 10 years after the events of"The Dream Child" and picks up with hunting down the last remaining teenagers of Springwood and one of them may just have a personal connection to him.

.. So I'll be honest, I quite enjoy this film, like a lot. The story is dumb and if you try piecing it together you'll give yourself a migraine but for what it is, this is a damn fun film, it takes the goofy nature of its predecessors and runs with it.

I really can't explain why I enjoyed this movie so much, maybe it was to the last 2 films bogging my experience down with just dumb stories and trying to take itself seriously when in fact it just comes of goofy, I'm not sure.

So the direction this movie goes in is total balls to the wall, with Freddy having even more comedic gags than he did in the past and in fact this movie plays out exactly like a cartoon at points, that it really felt like I was watching a live action horror version of "The Looney Tunes".

I get that description of the movie may turn some people off but this film isn't entirely like that as it features some of the most heartfelt writing in this series for a long time as it seemed like the creators wanted to give Freddy a proper send off.

So the acting in this film isn't all that great, it is pretty stale with nothing new to offer, the score is very odd with featuring little to none of the original score, rather replacing it with this "Fantasia 2000" music.

Also Freddy's makeup looked very off in this movie, it looked like a rubber mask and featured practically no blood or gore. With those negativities on top of the already hokey story, you'd think it would detract from my experience but it didn't.

This has got to be one my biggest guilty movie pleasures as I pretty much enjoyed myself from the start right up to almost the very end, as the climax to the film is very weak, I guess they killed Freddy so many ways in the past movies that they ran out of ideas and made this as anticlimactic as possible.

Before I give my score to this film I just have to say that the scenes that take place in Springwood are excellent, with the remaining residents being elderly and in a state of delirium, it felt like something straight out of "The Twilight Zone" or "Goosebumps" and I loved it.

Something I did find convoluted about the film is the timeline, I believe the official Nightmare Wiki states that this still takes place in the same universe but they were a handful of things that happened in this film that lead me to believe that "The Dream Master" and "The Dream Child" were kind of disregarded, I know that originally the filmmakers wanted to continue to the story of Alice with Jacob taking over the mantle but that didn't end up happening and also it wouldn't have made sense for Freddy to grow up into a regular human when he as baby was basically the spawn of the devil, I don't know.

I can't really say too much without spoiling the film but it's definitely an interesting topic to discuss about where exactly in the timeline does this film take place and if you any of you watching want to comment below and state your thoughts, definitely have at'er.

So overall this isn't a great film but it was blast to watch and my enjoyment of this film will keep me coming back, this may be high for this type of movie but, "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare" gets a 6/10.