A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is like the bastard son of 100 maniacs in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. That might seem harsh, and I realize there is a lot of love for it, Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough (as one reviewer on IMDB would seem to suggest) but to me it’s a movie mish-mash that is barely memorable.
I just watched it about two months ago and I can barely remember it. Which is unusual. If a movie is good enough (or bad enough) I usually remember quite a bit about it. Freddy’s Revenge is just a blur of disconnected scenes.
Synopsis: A teenage boy is haunted in his dreams by deceased child murderer Freddy Krueger, who is out to possess him in order to continue his reign of terror in the real world.
The one strong claim that Freddy’s Revenge can claim is that it saved a studio and got Wes Craven to yank back the reins after they tried to Pony Express his horse into the ground.
The acting is decent if forgettable. Some of the iffy special effects can be forgiven as it maybe not having the biggest budget. Freddy is fairly sinister. The bus scene is actually pretty decent and creepily memorable.
Those are my only compliments, such as they are. I’m not trying to drag anyone’s taste, I’m really not. What high horse can I get on when I absolutely love Freddy’s Dead?
It just makes me wonder how they looked at the first movie and then decided “Nah, we’re not doing anything like that”. If you’re totally going to throw out the rules and logic of the first movie, why bother using the same character? If your movie’s not strong enough to stand on its own then why do you think that slapping on a similar name and changing almost everything will change anything?
Even though Freddy gets more…chatty in later movies and Freddy’s Dead is just balls-out absurd it at least feels like a consistent absurd. A lot of the Freddy involvement feels like an afterthought. You also have an exploding bird. For some reason. And literally one scene later a toaster acts a little oddly by burning and popping toast. The dad exclaims that it’s the most bizarre thing he’s ever seen. Really dude?? A bird just exploded in your living room! That would set the ‘weird’ bar pretty high for me.
I can’t really muster up the hatred for this movie. That is reserved for the reboot. All I can really say is an emphatic “ehhhh”.
Since A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge does not share continuity with any of the movies it can be safely skipped, f you so choose. It is worth watching once as part of the series for the first time but any time we watch through the series at our house we just pretend like it’s not there.
Let me know your thoughts! Do you like Freddy’s Revenge? Love it? Hate it? Let me know!
GracieKat was the first co-host of Sci-Fi & Scary, Lilyn’s partner-in-crime, and sub-head of the Kali Krew. She reviews horror books, movies, and games for the site. She also does a weekly Focus on the Frightful feature, and is the site list-maker. She is also in control of the Sci-Fi & Scary podcast which will relaunch soon.
