E's Reviews RETRO: A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2 - Freddy's Revenge

Happy end of August everyone! We’re officially 2 months away from the greatest holiday EVER: HALLOWEEN! I have a 31 Days of Halloween marathon set up for October where I’ll be watching one or more horror films per day and I will be giving little mini reviews on all of them as I go. But for now...let’s talk about the cinematic dumpster fire that is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. This is also your one and only warning, there will be SPOILERS in this one and we may even get a bit controversial. I’d love to see what your thoughts are in the comments below! So here we go....

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was directed by Jack Sholder and stars Robert Englund reprising his role as Freddy Krueger, the demented demon that invades teens’ dreams and murders them in their sleep, stealing their souls. Except this time, he has his eyes on a guy named Jesse, played by Mark Patton, who, along with his family, now live in the same home Nancy was tormented by Freddy in the first film. There’s a difference this time.... Jesse is haunted in his dreams by Freddy Krueger, who is out to possess him in order to continue his reign of terror in the real world.

Now, right off the bat, that story sounds ridiculous. Why would Freddy need to possess someone to kill in the real world? It’s so much easier for this dream demon to just go into kid’s nightmares and kill them there (see: Nightmare Part 1...) That alone gave me some doubt as to the quality of the story, but I still thought it was an intriguing plot twist. The problem with this, however, is that the screenplay goes off the rails and never really finds it’s footing. The story, as bananas as it sounds, is just bland and never really makes any sense. They never explain this power Freddy has over Jesse except that it happens every time he sleeps and it gets ridiculously hot every time he’s about to change. The script is as cheesy as you’d expect from a horror franchise sequel, but this time it’s also just really boring to hear. There’s nothing interesting about any of the conversations, and even when they begin to reveal that Freddy is in fact possessing Jesse, it just fell flat. Some characters even figure things out on their own, magically, without proof. It felt lazy and felt like the studio was just trying to get more cash out of this scary monster killer that Freddy is. The technical aspects of the film were fine, I mean it’s totally watchable. The acting wasn’t that great, aside from Jesse, his friends, and the always entertaining Robert Englund. But due to the screenplay, there just wasn’t enough Freddy! Also, the kill count is notoriously LOW for a movie like this. Freddy is barely in the movie, and his makeup looked really really bad (burned pizza anyone?) Also, they sort of changed the way the glove looked, giving Freddy slimmer blades and instead of a glove, at times, it looks like it’s coming straight out of the tips of his fingers, which really bugged me.

The few things I did like was the penultimate transformation of Jesse into Freddy just before he murders his buddy, Ron. That was some damn good conventional effects. The body horror was amazing! There’s also a really funny scene of Jesse dancing in his room while packing his stuff away that had me in stitches. Mark Patton’s screaming was on par with some of the greatest scream queens I had ever watched before, and I was impressed with his pitch.

Now we get into a bit of a controversy here. I had seen the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. If you haven’t seen it, it’s incredible. I loved all the interviews with the actors, producers, and directors of the franchise. In this making of doc, they explain that Mark Patton is a homosexual actor. To me, I found that interesting, because he seemed very awkward in some scenes of the film. Knowing this information definitely changed my opinion of the film, and I decided that because of it, I didn’t like a lot of the scenes. Now hear me out...I think that it would’ve done way more justice if the character of Jesse was actually written as a gay man. His relationships with each character would’ve felt way more genuine and believable. They could’ve literally made him an iconic character in LGBTQ cinema by exploring that option. Why they decided he HAD to be a straight male cliche is beyond a missed opportunity. It would’ve given Jesse way more depth as a character, and I do not doubt Mark Patton would’ve done it more justice and been a lot more comfortable playing Jesse. There was homosexual tones at every turn, so I don’t get it. I really think it would’ve been a better movie overall if they just did that. But that’s just me.

Overall, it wasn’t a very good film. I do think it needs to be seen, though, so you can really appreciate the other films in the franchise. I just think there were a lot of missed opportunities they could’ve really explored to make the movie stand out and the screenplay was an absolute disaster. Mark’s performance was really the only thing that I found was redeemable. He was a great character and a great actor portrayed him. I just wanted to see if they would really give him a lot more depth.

Final Score: 4/10

Anyways, tell me what you thought or how you felt about the movie. Let’s keep the discussion going. I’d love to know what your thoughts are on this movie. Thanks for reading!