October 1, film 1
(spoiler alert: they didn't)
Despite being the last of the big icons to be introduced into the slasher lexicon, I've always felt that Freddy had a shorter expiration date than the rest of them. Sure, the quality of the films tended to be somewhat better and more creative than those of Jason, Michael and certainly Leatherface, but with the complex set piece design of the kills, along with the more elaborate make-up effects that Freddy by nature required, it wasn't going to be long before the reality of budgets weighed up against the potential ROI would soon become a losing game. Sure, they tried everything to make them more accessible to the mainstream, with less direct violence being further watered down with straight-up zany concepts that were becoming more and more unlikely to disturb, along with Freddy himself going from the pure malevolence that Wes Craven conceived for him to being the horror movie equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but time was not on the franchise's side. Only seven years removed from the 1984 original, the conclusion was brought forth in the sixth and then-final installment of the series,
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.
As expected, the film itself goes big on pretty much everything. The effects are more elaborate, the mythology of Freddy is blown wide open, and they even managed to rope in a few cameos from big actors at the time, including an uncredited one from Johnny Depp, returning the favor for the series that turned him into a star. It even ends with an extended 3D finale that pulls us right into the mind of Freddy himself, and admittedly, the effects there are pretty decent. Even the setup of the story, set 10 years into the future, boasts a lot of ambition, imagining a Springwood where Freddy "won" and has driven the whole town insane with grief for a kind of post-apocalyptic take on suburban America, and children's shelters in a nearby town resemble enormous police stations.
...aaaaaand that's where a lot of the problems begin. While one can't fault director/co-writer Rachel Talalay for wanting to give audiences what they want and even more, and compared to most other mainstream horror films at the time, involving someone who had been with the series since the beginning is a good idea in theory, the scope that she's going for here is simply too much for the parameters of the series itself and I daresay beyond her capabilities as either writer or director for a debut film. It's a film big on ideas and short, very short, on proper followups, leading to a lot of gaps in logic as the film skips over a lot of the connective tissue to make the characters arrive at their conclusions and decides to run with them anyway. Characters know all about Freddy's exploits without any reason why they should, manipulating the dream realm is apparently second-nature in some instances, and there's one completely insane plot point brought up late that Freddy's victims become forgotten in reality, which could create problems that never existed in the series before had it not been immediately dropped after its introduction. Talalay fares a smidgen better as a director, though there, she doesn't have as strong a visual identity as previous directors had, leading to a lot of strange stylistic choices that don't add much beyond showing some technical aptitude.
The problems magnify further whenever it concerns Maggie, or more precisely, the god-awful performance that Lisa Zane turns in for the character. While some of it can be pinned on the writing itself, especially as it makes the mistake of assuming that no one is going to catch onto Maggie's real identity once it's established to be a mystery, Zane proves too stiff and monotone for the complex emotions that her character is supposed to have, making the character too unlikable to root for. Great acting is a rare resource in slasher films, but why it sticks out that Zane is so bad is that the series had a much better batting average than most when it came to lead performances from actresses, all the way back to the first film's effective pairing of Amanda Wyss as the doomed yet sensitive Tina and Heather Lagenkamp as heroic Nancy; not award winning stuff, to be fair, but effective all the same in the way that Zane's Maggie simply refuses to be. The rest of the cast is just OK, with Yaphet Kotto as the seasoned vet with very little screen time and Breckin Meyer as the future big talent in the making (hey, you tell me that Joseph Gribble isn't a major role and see what happens!), but they can't put in enough work to make up for the void in the middle of the film itself.
And what of Freddy himself? Robert Englund is clearly having as much fun as he usually does, but the schtick is clearly in self-parody territory, and while Englund delivers the alleged zingers here with the same gusto as always, they have no hope of landing when they're attached to such lame set pieces. Featuring, as far as I know, film's only death via nails on a chalkboard delivered to a person with a physical handicap and definitely the only video game-related death that makes light of potential child abuse issues that's also accompanied by cartoon sound effects (if you folks like tonal whiplash, boy, does this film have plenty of that going around!), all one can really see in Freddy's kills is that New Line spent a lot of money on them and little else. The film sets up its victims as decent people that shouldn't die, one of the more commendable elements of the series that stayed fairly consistent, but with Freddy's menace being kept to an absolute minimum, there's no sense of dread and horror to help sell their losses once they're gone.
Truthfully, a lot of the good elements of the film, few as they are, almost seem accidental. For my money, the film never gets better than the introduction that ends with a scene in which Shon Greenblatt's character tumbles down a hill, which goes on for so long that it becomes hilarious. There's also the implication that being high in Nancy's old house allows for you to see the souls of Freddy's victims, which is quite extraordinary when you think about it, as is trying to come to grips with Freddy's overly complex plan to leave Springwood for good. As mentioned, there are a lot of decent ideas here, like going into Freddy's life before becoming a dream demon (unlike, well, every other slasher character, Freddy actually does benefit from elaboration), but it never comes together like it could. It was too much to put on a first-timer, even as well-versed as Talalay was with the series, and the results are messy and bloated. Little works, and the elements that do aren't important to the film at all. If it does have any kind of major positive influence, it's that it does help highlight just what a labor of love that the original was, and even makes you appreciate the previous films, as much of a slide that they were on that would make a film like this sadly inevitable. It sure as hell makes you appreciate more what Craven did with New Nightmare, which may not have been possible without the failures here. As it is, however, this film is exactly what you expected it to be: a whimpering end to a series that had a reach that soon exceeded its grasp, and the film we have here is the exact moment when it left the touch of its razor-blade fingertips for good.
