The series gets a mercy-killing.
My word, it’s no wonder Wes Craven felt the need to redefine Freddy in “A New Nightmare.” By this point, he’s like a cartoon villain. The killings (while I’ve never been that guy who watches these things for them) were like watching a sicker version of Bugs Bunny. There was even cartoon sound effects! Freddy looks a little better than he did in the last movie, but not by much. He now looks more like he’s got a weird skin condition than horrible, disfiguring burns.
And the plot didn’t make a whole lot of sense, either. We start with an on-screen message that says the movie takes place ten years from now (well, ten years from 1991, when it was made. Although nothing looks different), and apparently, Freddy has killed every kid in Springwood (the town Elm Street is located in). The killings are all rules “mysterious deaths and suicides” and apparently all the adults are suffering from “mass hysteria.” Alright, so we haven’t even seen an actor yet, and ALREADY things aren’t making sense. First of all, if every kid in town was systematically murdered, and the streak went on for ten years, why the hell did people continue to live there? Call me crazy, but it seems to me like that would be the type of things that makes someone want to get out of Dodge. Secondly, after the largest string of “mysterious deaths and suicides” in American history, and this place isn’t quarantined, or under constant surveillance, or at LEAST a notorious American mystery?
Once again, we get the “Freddy’s back, but we’re not gonna make any attempt to explain HOW, since he was supposedly destroyed in the last movie” issue. At least this time we get some explanation for how Freddy became what he is (we already got the story of his twisted birth in the last two movies). Apparently, when he was killed, he was confronted by dream demons, who promised that he would live forever in dreams, as long as he did their bidding. The ultimate solution, the one that was supposed to finally kill Freddy for good (and actually DID until over a decade later in Freddy Vs. Jason) was that they had to pull him OUT of their dreams (like Nancy did in the first movie), and kill him there. Why he looked normal he was taken out in this one, when he was sill burnt up and crazy when they did it the first time is beyond me. The real question is why he didn’t just return to the dream world like he did back then? When Nancy did it, all Freddy had to do was grab someone, and collapse into the dream world, taking Marge (Nancy’s mom) with him. Fortunately, instead of just turning her back on Freddy and stealing his power (which, IMO, was a much better, much more creative way of killing him), Maggie (Freddy’s long-lost daughter) actually beat him senseless and then blew him up with a pipe bomb.
And so, my trip down Elm Street with the original series proper comes to a close. It had its up points, but for the most part, I can’t believe they made six of these things. I have to agree with Wes Craven, and many of the series fans; if Craven didn’t make it, it wasn’t good. That’s not a pretentious “loyalty to the writer” statement, it’s my God-honest review. The first one was good. The third was good. Wes Craven made both. The rest of them, including this one, just plain sucked on ice. Two stars.