I keep mentioning Freddy Vs. Jason, so let's signpost that with a fun fact: As big dumb 80's slashers, I value the Freddy films way higher than the Jason ones. I find Friday the 13th to be very one note "the teens have sex and then I cut their throats" nonsense. Freddy, on the other hand, has had two things going for him to catch my interest time and time again. The first is the novel approach of killing people in their dreams, which opens up all sorts of creative liberty and gonzo approach to how to kill the teens. So, for instance, you have the madcap Looney Tunes-like malarkey going on in this fucking movie. Parasitic hearing aids that amplify sound and make a deaf kid's head explode, or the bit where Breckin Meyer gets high and passes out and goes into a TV world where Freddy is playing Nintendo to try and kill him before whipping out a knifed Mattel Power Glove and winning at the game/plunging Breckin Meyer into the depths of hell. Yes, this is rock fucking stupid and a total decay from the original horrific concept of Freddy, and it's like a shock of cold water in three years when Wes Craven comes back and makes him scary. On the other hand, I kind of don't care. This slasher film slapstick approach, this... slashstick, let's call it, is gloriously entertaining. It reminds me of Busta Rhymes roundhouse kicking and electrocuting the balls of Michael Myers in Halloween Resurrection. People hate that movie for that, but I am here for that dumb shit.
I said there were two things these Nightmare movies had going for them over other slashers, and the second was interesting themes and subtext. From the gay undertones of 2 to the state of mental health in 3 to grief and loss and memory in 4, there has usually always been something really intriguing going on under the hood of these movies beyond just kids getting killed in their dreams. Nightmare 5 kind of skipped out on this, to the film's detriment, but you better believe there's something happening in this movie. It's about the cycle of abuse. All of the troubled teens in the movie are victims of abuse in one form or another, from one extreme to the other, and in their deep dark nightmares they are confronted by it; some killed by it. For all the slapstick Nintendo dork shit happening with Breckin Meyer, it's notable that the first enemy in his game is his jock dad yelling digitized cries of BE LIKE ME! before Meyer beats him over the head with a tennis racket. You get other more serious cases of abuse with the other characters, and it creates an interesting tonal whiplash.
We haven't even gotten to the main lead, Maggie, yet. Who, spoilers for a 30 year-old movie where a slasher monster dies, is Freddy's daughter who was given up for adoption after his heinous crimes. It's implied that Freddy losing his daughter is what drove him to come back from the dead as a vengeful dream killer ghost, taking everyone else's children from them. Indeed, much like Halloween Resurrection earlier, the film opens with his victory. He's killed every kid in Springwood, Ohio, and now after a quick recharge from killing off part of this movie's cast he wants to go out into the world and kill more. Every town has an Elm Street, and Freddy's an immortal unkillable thing thanks to some bullshit dream demons... but forget them for a second. Let's focus on that cycle of abuse, as we learn in the climax when Maggie dream dives into Freddy's twisted mind, IN THREE DEE, and finds his own lurid history of abuse at the hands of his own father. Freddy harnessed the pain, laughing it off and deciding to inflict it instead. He's convinced of this cycle. His father abused him. He became a child killer, in life and in death. Now he's convinced it's in Maggie's blood, and that she'll put on the glove and be unable to resist becoming a monster.
Maggie, who saw her own mother killed at the hands of Freddy, responds to this by ramming Freddy's own fucking glove into his chest, and also a pipe bomb, and blowing him up. The cycle of abuse isn't a sure thing, much like the guaranteed continuation of an 80's slasher movie series. Sometimes you can break out of it, shove a pipe bomb into its chest, and break free. The cycle's broken, the dream demons are dispersed, and Freddy's fucking dead, baby. That's the movie, and I'm honestly a little impressed by it. I would be remiss if I didn't close by mentioning that it was directed by Rachel Talalay, who would go on to direct all the Peter Capaldi finales of Doctor Who. Those are spectacular fucking episodes, and her direction in this is sound. I really don't know much about that side of things, but the way this movie looks is just stunning. You can tell the same person directed Heaven Sent, is what I'm saying. Amusingly, I saw her name pop up again in a franchise I've grown invested in: I was sitting here watching the fourth episode of the new Quantum Leap, only to see that "Directed by Rachel Talalay" credit and perk right up. Still, that's neither here nor there. I should close out fittingly, since the movie opens with a quote by Nietzsche about dreams (and also "Welcome to primetime, bitch", for some reason).
Freddy is dead. Freddy remains dead, and we have killed him.
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