Review of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) by Brandon S — 14 Apr 2010

In part six of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, dream monster Freddy Krueger has finally killed all the children of his hometown, and seeks to escape its confines to hunt fresh prey. To this end, he recruits the aid of his (previously unmentioned) daughter. However, she discovers the demonic origin of her father's powers and meets Dad head-on in a final showdown.

Given that oleâ?? pizza face has slashed well beyond his kill-by date, this con­cluding deathfest, which promises to be the last instalment in the Nightmare On Elm Street series, is timely and long over­due. However, it is hard not to feel that even the supposedly definitive death Freddy gets at the end of this movie will prove to be a temporary one.

The major problem with Freddy's Dead is that it comes on as if it's going to be something very different, then turns out to be exactly the same. There's an entirely new title format (it's not called A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part 6: The Dream Something), a caption setting the action in 2001 and a declared intent to get Freddy into new locales across the USA.

This apart, however, a group of card­board cut-out (and cut-up) characters are promptly introduced, a few pathetic mysteries set in motion and it's up and away on the usual stuff.With such a ramshackle formula, it's hard not to waste time on the gimmicks; unbilled cameos from Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Roseanne Barr, more grindingly boring heavy metal music, a borderline tasteless dwelling on child abuse and evil father figures, presumably to stop you from leaving early.

Finally, the one interesting idea; what would a town be like if all the teenagers in it had been slaughtered in five movies? Is thrown away with a few cheap jokes.

You know Freddy may or may not be finally dead, but he's looking pretty damn tired.