Title: Freddy’s Dead (The Final Nightmare)
Year: 1991
Dir.: Rachel Talalay
Producer(s): Robert Shaye, Michael De Luca, Michael N. Knue, Aron Warner
Writer(s): Michael De Luca, Rachel Talalay (story)
Company: New Line Cinema
Starring: Lisa Zane, Robert Englund, Shon Greenblatt, Yaphet Kotto, Lezlie Deane
As much fun as I have watching this movie, this movie goes off the deep end and everyone knows it and they run with it. It’s a shame when the end credits are literally the best part in the whole film which is a recap of the previous films. That’s sad.
However, there are some shining moments in Freddy’s Dead, some.
There’s a scene where Maggie (Zane) is confronting Freddy (Englund) but she’s wearing her childhood dress, hair in pigtails and *spoiler alert* She is his daughter and there’s this quick banter and a circling camera angle and I think that’s a great visual moment.
Some interesting camera angles, special effects, warm color use is about all I can drum up.
The 3D aspect is not that great. I don’t know how well it worked in theaters as well. It looks really rough and horror has a history of gimmicks (3D, theater chairs buzzing, things flying in the air, etc) but how can it be that awkward looking? Even Friday the 13th 3D is slightly better in the 3D realm (in my opinion) than this.
There’s nothing special or magical about Freddy’s Dead. The kills, as fun as they are, also are just meh. There’s these glimpses of a serious tone underneath, i.e., Freddy killing his own wife/mother of his daughter, the abuse cycle that Freddy just seemed to never escape, the background of the character Tracy and her home life and even a town dealing with the aftermath of Freddy and having all their children killed. Imagine what Freddy’s Dead could have been like if they took it in a more serious tone, ended on a note of “hey, we’re ending with what we started with the original, this is a bad person, a bad, evil person who existed” but no, we end with Freddy looking at the screen, breaking the fourth wall to complain about children, saying “kids” before blowing up.
Really? That’s how we’re treating Freddy?
I can see why a lot of fans don’t pick Freddy’s Dead over the original, Dream Warriors, hell, New Nightmare and Freddy’s Revenge gets more praise than Freddy’s Dead. It missed the mark, they did it on purpose, ran with an MTV Freddy and canonically, it laid dormant for YEARS. How and where else can you go from that? New Nightmare did change things up a bit until Freddy vs Jason which either is canon or stands on its own. Wait til I talk about that, I saw that in theaters, loved it and now I’m questioning that one as well.
In my honest opinion if you want more laughs and less gore, Freddy’s Dead is for you. Like I said before, it’s fun but it lost a whole lot of magic and experimentation that the other films did previous with special effects, dream sequences, plot, kills, need I go on?
Shots of Horror 