A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
Letdown sequel and Freddy’s strange obsession
to get inside teenage boys
And we’re back with the second entry to the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' saga. And with no other than, according to most, the
lowest point in the series, Nightmare on Elm street 2: Freddy’s revenge.
Produced
only one year after the original nightmare came out, this is the movie that has
fans and critics slamming down their fists in union. But is it as bad as most
say? Well, let’s take a look at the plot.
Confused
teenager Jesse and his family move to a new house, and it would only be logical
that the house would be the same house where Nancy ‘banished’ the dream demon,
Freddy Kreuger, and she sure did a lousy job of it, because guess who comes knocking
down the walls of Jesse’s dreams? And he wants nothing more than his body for
him to play with while they together replay the shower scene from 'American History X' with Jesse’s gym teacher and some whips…wait did we just stumbled
into a different kind of movie?
Yeah…it’s
gonna get weird, but the gist of it is that dear ol’ Fred wants to take over
this whiny little bratty kid’s body to…murder around I guess? Ok, fist question
here, why does Freddy want to be mortal again? He does know that the last time
he was mortal he got burned harder than Taylor Swift at the VMA’s a few years
back, there’s the obvious fact that he’ll walk around like a guy that has stuck
pancakes to his face, and this time, people will actually be able to waste his
scorched ass. I mean, it’s never explained why he was able to haunt kid’s
dreams and become practically a god within his own realm, but it sounds like a
hell of an upgrade from kiddyfidler groundskeeper to all powerful dream demon
that murders all who sleep.
Just
seems like a cheap trick have a possession story, but well, beside that gaping
plothole, what else can there be said about this movie? Well, ok, disregarding
the fact that Fred’s got a death wish, why does he want Jesse in particular? He
even says at the beginning that he’s special or something, how is he special?
Was he born under the star of plot convenience when all the BS planets were
aligned? It’s never explained, Jesse’s got a younger sister, why didn’t Fred go
after her? guessing with his past he’d probably think ’the younger the better’,
and kids are much more easily fooled, why didn’t he just show up in her dream
as a giant fluffy bunny or goddamn Justin Bieber or whatever.
But
no, he wants Jesse, not any other kid in the neighborhood , just him and his
awkward teenage romance with the girl next door.
Ah
yes, the girlfriend Lisa, played by Kim Myers. She practically carries the
movie in the third act, and why isn’t she the main character of the movie? She has
a much more interesting personality and she is probably the best girlfriend any
one could ever wish for, you start
telling about how you have dreams in which you brutally murder left and right? She
accepts it and actually tries to help. You think you might have a spiritual
connection with a child murderer that has been dead for the better part of the
past decade? She believes you and search for a way to sever the connection. I mean
really, faithful, helpful, cheery, nice and cute as a button? Do girls like
that even exists?
So
yeah, the story and the protagonist aren’t exactly the strong points of this
movie, so what is?
Well,
the effects are nice. Sure, they ain’t as good as the first one, shocker there,
but at times they were creative, well, except for when the movie decide to pull
a Hitchcock and redo a scene from “Birds” with an extra kamikaze ending. Seriously,
exploding birds, what the hell where they thinking?
But
for the rest, I guess credit is due where it is, and some of the effects where
interesting. One of my favorite being at the very beginning where a school bus is
being driven of the road as the landscape changes into a hellish abyss. Pretty neat
scenery, but the whole movie does feel a little cheap. But all that good is
being ruined by the fact that the first movie did everything a tenfold better,
and the things they try to do just seems strange. For example, the entire
movie, Freddy doesn’t have his glove, weird right? The knives just come out of
the fingertips . I first thought it might be because the glove actually plays
in the movie as an object of both rejection and temptation for Jesse, and is
actually a physical object in the real world. But then the vodka started to
slowly dissolve from my brain and I remembered that the glove was also a physical
object in the first movie, where Freddy did have a glove at all times. It might
be a small mistake here and there, but piled up, they do tend to piss off
viewers.
But
did this movie do anything right? In my opinion it did, I really liked the
Freddy in this movie, it seemed like he had more of a personality, and even though
he wasn’t in the spotlight much, he does get his times worth in the third act,
which gives us a nice rest from our other obnoxious main character
But
now we come to the big question, the one that had everyone’s jimmies rusted
when they saw this flick:
Are
the Homo-erotic undertones of Nightmare on Elm street 2 there by accident or was
this really meant to tackle the subject of homosexual feeling during the coming
of age of adolescence?
Well,
there’s no question that some of those undertones were blatant, if I can say
so. Sure I joked about it earlier with my summary of the plot. But to be fair,
this movie deals a lot with sexuality, a lot more than in the first movie,
ironic seeing as that no one actually had sexual intercourse in this movie, while
in the first movie, the act was very much there early on in the movie to set
the stamps on the characters of “the whore” and “the jock”, an almost
ritualistic scene in every slasher movie, and above all, Wes Craven movie, who
would never pass on the chance to have a cliché to then shine an ironic light
on it.
But
the fact that this movie deals more openly on the theme of adolescence and sexuality
is all well and good, but why are the homo-erotic undertones so blatant? But a
better question is, are they really there?
I believe
that the homophobia of the modern age might have clouded our mind a bit on that
subject, we have been crying wolf for so long that we tend to see them everywhere.
I’ll admit that there are some scenes that are very much ‘gay’, there is no
disputing about that. Like when half awake, Jesse stumbles into a leather bar
and runs into his Gym teacher, who obviously has a ‘Dom’ complex, who makes
Jesse exercise in the middle of the night only to lure him to the showers,
where he gets his own misfortunate encounter with Freddy. There is no question
that this scene was very much ‘gay’, yes. But maybe, and I’m just speculating
here, this scene was meant more as a way for Jesse to overcome his father issues
and fear of school. The strong, masculine, dominating Gym teacher could almost
be a textbook description of how most teenagers saw their own father figures. And
the fact that Freddy , through Jesse, actually serves what he deems a ‘just
reward’ only proves Jesse’s own obsession with his revolting nature against his
own father who is actually a very strict masculine figure.
There
are many more questionable scenes, such as Jesse’s disgust toward the act of
coitus with Lisa, but what most seem to miss is why he is revolted. In the
scene Jesse and Lisa are getting it on in a private room at a party, when
suddenly Jesse’s tongue turns into a misshaped mess of flesh as he was about to
use it on her bosoms, which forces our wimpy protagonist to run away in fear to
seek comfort at his bro’s house. This was seen by many as very proving of the
undertones of the movie. But lost in translation is actually a much deeper
scene than that. The fact that Jesse is disgusted in himself, and not Lisa, seems
to actually show us that Jesse suffers from a ‘Hedgehog dilemma complex’ rather
than homosexual urges. He is not disgusted by the female body, but is actually
afraid of hurting Lisa was he ever to get this close to her.
So
is this movie as Avant-guard in homosexual movement for the slasher genre as
everyone is saying?
No,
I’m not saying that the gay undertones aren't there, because they are. But I think
it comes more from the lack of direction from the director’s part rather than
actual intent.
So
with all this said and done, is this movie any good? Well, it makes for an
interesting tale about coming to terms with adolescence by having a demon
literally taking over your body, but it makes for an horrible sequel to Nightmare
on Elm Street. But I still don’t think it’s deserving of all the hate it’s
getting.
Personal
rating: 5/10
Critical
rating: 4/10
Things
I’ve learned from ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Freddy’s Revenge’
- The
‘Revenge’ part is pretty played down, although the kill count is pretty damn
high.
-
Jesse’s performance in his bedroom of ‘Touch me’ was still better than Miley Cyrus
at the VMA’s.
- Exploding
birds invading other movies than ‘Birdemic’
-
When a dude breaks into your room in the middle of the night, jumps on you while
you’re in bed and put his hand over your mouth while saying that there is
something trying to get inside his body so he want to sleep next to you, your
reaction shouldn't be calmly giving him relationship advise, no matter the
bro-mance
Freddy’s
Kill count:
14
Best
Kill in this movie:
Exploding
birds
Best
Kill so far:
Blood
geyser
Body#19
