A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

According to many 'real' fans, this sequel is the black sheep of the entire series, no matter how bad the future sequels got. There's a couple of good reasons for this. For one thing, we get just a taste of Freddy and his razor-sharp (ha, I made it funny!) wit; even with the subtitle "Freddy's Revenge," there's probably a maximum of ten minutes of quality Kreuger time on this film. While this is also somewhat true of the original, that movie had strong characterization, an interesting plot, and things happening to more than compensate. This film's pretty much lacking in all of these departments, especially in that last one.

The other reason is that, as I mentioned in my review of the original, the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise has the benefit of having the perfect premise for a horror film. For some unfathomable reason, this movie not only pretty much ignores the possibilities, but the writers decided to make it into a crusty old haunted house movie instead. Yes, this movie might as well have been called Freddy Meets The Amityville Horror. Stuff moves around, animals go crazy, unplugged appliances act on their own free will, a guy is possessed and forced to kill, things heat up and melt and spontaneously combust...ye gods, things heat up and melt and spontaneously combust a lot in this movie. Is it because Freddy was burned to death, or was the scriptwriter incredibly lazy? You decide!

The alleged plot centers around a young teenager named Jesse who has just moved into the old house of the protagonist of the last film Nancy. Now, it's implied later that five years had passed between this film's events and the original. That's a pretty long time for a piece of prime suburban real estate to remain untouched. So, Nancy's mother killed herself in the house? Big deal! Teenagers probably die mysterious deaths on Elm Street all the time and yet the neighborhood always looks pretty well-inhabited. And then there's that Crystal Lake place, where massacres happen on a weekly basis yet it's always reopened. Maybe in this universe the gruesome deaths of teenagers aren't enough of a downer.

Jesse hasn't even unpacked yet when he has a dream where Freddy appears and urges him to "Kill for me." Why does Freddy suddenly need some guy to help him go about his business when he's apparently been doing so well before? He wasn't restricted to Nancy's house at all in the original. It's established later in the series (well, sort of; some of the plot 'consistencies' in this series make as much sense as trickle-down economics) that Freddy occasionally needs certain psycically sensitive people to strike in the real world, but he's never needed to pull a Linda Blair on them. My friend Lauren, who watched this masterpiece with me, and I came up with a good theory: Fredd's just lazy here. Really, this movie ought to have been subtitled "Freddy's Half-Assed Revenge."

As the film stumbles forward, Freddy makes a parakeet (!) explode, and then an unplugged toaster. He really just ain't trying here. Meanwhile Freddy performs a real supernatural miracle by making Jesse more angsty than ever before. I mean, one minute he's in awkward "comic relief" scenes dancing around with a phallic symbol (you'll have to see it for yourself and it sort of indicates a homophobic reading of the film, which I won't get into here) and then he's brooding. A lot. Of course, it's beyond even Freddy's powers to make this transition believable.

Oh, Jesse also has a girlfriend who bears a bizarre resemblance to Meryl Streep. For that reason, I believe I'll just call her 'Meryl.' Jesse is such a useless character that Meryl has to do the so-Freddy-really-is-real research for him…off-screen of course. Since teenagers know so much about love, Jesse and Meryl go in a matter of ten minutes from carpoolmates to soulmates, even though the plot implies that they only met a few days before the movie starts. Since this is a story about possession, you probably already know exactly what direction this monstrosity is heading in…

As Jesse becomes more haunted by nightmares and falls further under Freddy's homicidal spell, causing him to, oh, wander the streets half-naked, Jesse's father naturally accuses him of being a drug addict, while Mom doesn't find it all that strange. While Nancy's parents were believable, psychologically complex characters, Jesse's parents come fresh from the Great Hollywood Cookie-Cutter. Dad's an unrepentent asshole, while Mom's infinitely sympathetic.

Anyway, as the plot "progresses," Freddy finds the need to force Jesse to go to a S&M bar in the middle of the night (which only makes sense...well, those homophobic metaphors)! Oh that Freddy, what whacky things will he do next? Inexplicably, Jesse runs into his gym teacher, who made him and his friend do push-ups twice (well, technically once, since the same footage was used in both scenes), and inexplicablier, the gym teacher, still dressed in greased-up leather, makes Jesse go to the school and run laps (!). As Jesse does so…for some reason…Freddy uses his hoodoo to attack the gym teacher with sports equipment. Geesh Freddy, never has there been this much half-assing since Raul Julia's performance in Overdrawn At The Memory Bank. Jump ropes drag the gym teacher over to the shower where, in perhaps the most homoerotic death scene ever filmed until Anne Rice's works became adapted for the silver screen, Jesse (possessed by Freddy…hence Jesseddy) sneaks up on the coach (now stripped!) and slashes him to death.

All in all, Jesseddy's "rampage" is a rather whimpy one. He almost kills his kid sister and murders his friend Grady, but only after making a fuss about it. While Jesseddy does kack a few kids at a pool party held by Meryl in the movie's so-called climax, he mostly just throws around some furniture and overturns the punch bowl....maybe this movie should have just been named Freddy's Faux Paux. Just so you know, Jesseddy is finally confronted by Meryl in the infamous boiler room, who, with the power of True Love (and, perhaps, the power of heterosexuality) so sickens Freddy with her unconvincing dialogue that Freddy leaves Jesse's body and the nightmare ends...or does it?

Even for a sequel, this is a stunningly bad development. The only thing more dull than the story is the acting, which is generally worse than what you can find in a sitcom. The script actually rips off the original by not only trying to blur the lines between dream and reality towards the end (and doing a much worse job of it), but by stealing the ending, almost intact! It also tries to ape the original's dynamics between teenagers and adults, but instead falls flat on its face. Jesse and Meryl hold between them about as much personality as a seat belt buckle, so who the hell cares if Jesse stays Jesseddy or if Jesse's mom ever buys a brian or if Meryl ever gets laid or what?

To be fair, Freddy's as amusing as always, even though he gets about ten minutes of screentime. There was also some interesting, well-done (for the time) effects, such as when Jesse first fully metamorphs into Freddy, the scene where Freddy "heats up" the pool (sadly, no teens were barbequed), and where Jesse's tongue, possessed by Freddy, stretches out eerily and grossly over an oblivious Meryl…Unfortunately, none of this can begin to make up for what is otherwise a boring, clichéd haunted house/possession story stuffed into the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

So in the end, who did Freddy get his revenge on? Us.