A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
The Man of Your Dreams is Back.
I could cherry pick through dozens of movies that still exist in the backlog, or the droves of new movies out that haven’t made it to the backlog yet - or I could take the easy way out. Obviously, I’m doing that because it requires no thinking on my part as long as the movie is available - which it was. Perhaps it’s the month of your dreams, or maybe the Thursdays of your nightmares as this year is cranking up to be a one after the other progression that would oddly work really well thematically. Anyways, beware the house with the bars on the windows, tonight is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2.
Freddy’s revenge is part of the title, but seems kind of stupid if you apply any thought to it. His revenge? Wasn’t the first movie technically his revenge? How is this movie, where a seemingly unrelated family to any of the previous events moves into the house of our final girl from the first movie, doing anything to enact revenge? Anyways, I digress - a new family moves into the house from the first movie, and the movie kicks off with the nightmares starting already. Of course, the lead doesn’t know if he’s crazy or not, but it isn’t long until old Fred the dead starts telling our older-than-school age looking school boy to do his dirty deeds and rack up a body count. Whose to say a demon of the dreams couldn’t control you while you sleep? Seethe under the sexual undercurrents and hold onto your butts, it’s time to see if the power of friendship can hold up against the wrath of Freddy.
Actors do alright here. There’s some parts where it’s actually pretty good, and some where it’s not so hot. I mean, I get that some of the situations are pretty ridiculous - like the combusting bird - so it’s hard to say how a person would really react to a given situation to base it against. Chemistry can be good at times, sometimes endearing and sometimes just kind of forced. Sometimes things get blown out of proportion a little - but again, perhaps that’s occasionally the point. I’d make the argument that it’s probably a solid 3 our of 5, but depending on your tolerances it might feel a star down. Or main villain is back chewing things up, but he’s still firmly stuck in the semi-serious neck of the Freddy woods, and it leads to a far more sleepy time then the upcoming entries when Englund starts really leaning into it. He’s also not really around all that much visually it feels - but I think that’s less to do with actual screen time and more to do with how things feel when he’s not around.
Characters is probably going to be part of the largest section of make-or-break for folks. I mean, actors that don’t strike you as high schoolers is one thing, but personalities in this one are almost non-existent for most characters. I guess the one is “cool guy jock,” but that’s pretty much all on presentation value since we only see him really during gym-related stuff. The gal lead’s best friend? I don’t know, she horny I guess. I don’t even remember if they said her name at all in the movie - not that it matters with how little she has to do with the plot. That’s pretty much the feeling that goes around - there’s the lead and his conflict with Freddy, there’s the lead lady who loves the lead and wants to help him and contend with Freddy, and between the two I’d almost argue the lady lead is more productive to the plot while the male lead is more conductive towards all the little stuff people rip out of the movie we’ll get to in a later section. Freddy, for what it’s worth, really just feels like his motive is killing folks in the real world, even though we saw him murder people in their sleep in the last movie and that seems like a far more impressive way of doing things. It almost seems like a step backwards for his character’s power level, and make him feel super generic because of it.
The scariest thing to wake up to, a disaster room.
Effects work is still done fine, taking into account the time period and everything. It’s a tad more gory than the first movie, and some of the effects look better than others for sure. We have this whole transformation scene which is somewhat neat, but also calls back to the wall scene from the first movie where at least that part sort of felt more impressive (although without the additional sections added here that are pretty good). There’s a lot of hot-related stuff in here as well, so expect a lot of steam popping up throughout things. It’s different levels of sensible as we go - it being hot because of the whole Freddy burning to death but also taking all the kids to the boiler room thematically is great, but the random combusting bird seems a bit over the top crazy, even compared to melting vinyls and lamps. Although we can kind of infer it’s the whole Freddy-connection that causes the heat thing, it also doesn’t really get explained why sometimes it a single room, and then other times it’s an entire yard that’s walls removed from Freddy. Finale syndrome must be. Still, for the most part people should have a good time with plenty of the effects, and it can be fun thinking about how some of them were down compared to how obvious other parts were done.
For the body count though, it does feel somewhat sparse - not that the first had a wild body count either, given that as time goes by in the real world the movies constantly try to one up each other. One or two might be meaningful to the plot, but the bulk all come withing about five minutes of each other and are completely and utterly superfluous. Setting gets to be a little varied, ranging from our main house to a pool party, the school sports yard and some dreamscapes, and even a biker bar kind of place at one point. It’s not crazy wild with it’s variance, but it’s enough to break things up a little bit without getting you confused as to where you are. Composition-wise things are done pretty well, and there are some nice details in there and some easter eggs now and then. Admittedly, a scene or two does end up feeling rather drawn out, but it’s not too egregious about it.
Audio is done fine for the most part, although there is a bit of a balance issue with some line deliveries I feel. It could just be Hulu or my audio device, but it’s also not something I feel I don’t remember a lot from older movies. Music is there, with plenty of songs that work fine either as background or tying in a bit of modern radio play action - at least, modern for then. Sound effects are good, with one fire lighting noise being so clear and loud I thought it was a buddy inhaling. For the thoughtful types, I think they got the most out of this over the years. Honestly, most of it was beyond me, even in this watching. See, I guess the movie has a bit of a rep for some queer experiences wrapped up in there - and to some extent I guess I can see where it’s coming from, as it does sort of have those undercurrents of pressure to it - but I also admit that I’m that flat-lined level of intelligence when I watched this that if anything I would have thought it would be more offensive to folks in that mindset, what with the handling of elements like the gym teacher and his visits to seedy places. Now, I’ll leave that up to the better thinkers out there - but some of the other basics like the power of love are pretty obvious in this thing. It also still harps a little on the power of belief in here, although it doesn’t feel quite as direct as it did in the first one. I’d argue that you could probably get some mileage out of some form of split personalities on it as well, and feeling not right in your own skin or mind - which perhaps is really what that smart group is pulling on when they throw down all those undertones in the first place, as I hear it wasn’t entirely uncommon for folks to be uncomfortable having to effectively hide their true selves from everyone to avoid consequences of other people (which I don’t think is an entirely vanished thing, considering how often people can straight up be jerks). Either way, there is stuff to think about here, even if the handling maybe isn’t the best or the movie itself isn’t the best.
Furnace of horrors.
It’s an alright enough follow up to a good movie for the time it was out. However, I don’t feel like it really did much to really live up to the potential of what could have been and instead it feels like a semi-interesting story that was perhaps rushed out to make more bank. The major culprit of that, I think, was probably mostly abandoning the dream side of things - pretty much everything is in the real world, with a few moments for dreams or some level of cross-over. It is technically a further exploration on the subject really - going from effecting the real world from the dream to controlling the real world from the dream - but it gets a bit muddy with how it handles it - working in the favor of what is a dream, but to the detriment of the “is it actually the kid” when the supposed Freddy controlled kid, whose now being seen by everyone as Freddy, just phases through things, teleports, and sets the world on fire. It’s okay, and I wouldn’t skip it if you wanted to go through the whole franchise by any means, but I also feel it does lack what some of the ones coming up really do a good job of having (and potentially a possibility of why I like the remake less) - fun.