Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) Review

“Kids”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

If there is one thing very difficult for the slasher genre is going out on a high note for their last canonical entry. The best example, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.


PLOT


The 1991 film takes place in a distant future where the spirit of child killer Freddy Krueger has slain nearly every child/teenager in Springwood. Only one teen, John Doe, survives him when waking up outside city limits but doesn’t remember his past upon waking up. He goes to a troubled shelter and meets three residents, affluent stoner Spencer Lewis (Breckin Meyer), partially deaf Carlos Rodriguez (Ricky Dean Logan) and the tough girl Tracy Swan who wants to run away to California to escape her father’s abuse. There, he becomes a patient for counselor Maggie Buroughs. When she notices a newspaper clipping in his pocket, she hopes to cure his amnesia by taking him to Springwood and the other three tag along. They try to leave until reaching the abandoned 1428 Elm Street house that once belonged to the Thompson family. When looking at the abandoned orphanage to discover Krueger had a child, they guess John is his son since he chose to let him live. Freddy is able to kill Carlos and when Tracy falls asleep next, Maggie is able to save her. But because John joined the dream as well, Freddy is able to impale him and reveal he actually had a daughter. By the time they return to the shelter, everyone else has forgotten the boys except Maggie’s co worker Don, who knows Fred has been controlling dreams in order to make people forget about others. Maggie later finds her adoption papers confirming she was Krueger’s daughter Katherine, and her was name was changed after he died. When Doc later saves Tracy, he learns his powers come from Dream demons that continuously revive him unless he’s in the real world. When he tells this to Maggie, she volunteers entering the dream world again to stop her biological father for good. When exploring Fred’s mind, she sees he went through his domestic abuse by his foster father in his youth, inflicted self abuse in his teenage years and killed his wife Loretta, Maggie’s birth mother, when she discovered his secret tendencies. Eventually, she pulls him out and fights him on her own, fatally stabbing with his clawed glove, impaling him with a steel support beam and destroy his body with a pipe bomb given to her by Tracy. The film ends with Maggie rejoicing with her friends that the slasher is officially dead.


THOUGHTS


My expectations were severely low at this point because every attempt at being new was backfiring, which was becoming exhausting to watch. Director Rachel Talalay and writer Michael De Luca definitely had the pressure in making a conclusion with whole new material, hoping it would please all the fans at this point, only to take the hardest step back. With this one being so bad, it's a wonder why Wes Craven returned for New Nightmare and Robert Englund pleased the fans starring in Freddy vs Jason as well. While I smiled seeing Johnny Depp have a dream cameo, I cringed so hard seeing then couple Tom Arnold & Roseanne Barr be Springwood citizens at a fair who run into the delinquent group. Freddy is just cartoonish from the dialogue alone and it's these special effects that aren't aging well from the demon trio that give him his power, seeing the background of him parodying The Wizard of Oz, or not looking burnt enough compared to how he's appeared before. If I can put the creativity points anymore, it's gonna go to the use of power glove and having Carlos explode from the ear. Again, it makes the same mistakes in setting up new characters we don't care enough about despite being central focus, while trying to continue teaching viewers . I mean you know it's a challenge to root for any guy called John Doe no matter how off-guard Shon Greenblatt portrays him the whole time. I got nothing against Tracy either because Lezlie Deane does validate her aggressiveness being a shield, but it's just as one noted as past victims and it's a miracle she survived. I don't connect with Doc either no matter how knowledgeable Yaphet Kotto sets him up to be, but that aspect of him is very rushed since we don't get the time to see how he knows Freddy's advantages before we see him figure out how to defeat him. Like we should know how he's sure Fred was manipulating people's memories outside Springwood. That even leads to me thinking how has Krueger not blocked his mind before? I have to ask since it's too big a big coincidence for Alice to not find more memories during The Dream Child. The only one I'm interested in is of course Maggie because through Lisa Zane's performance, she remains a compassionate figure willing to put the past behind her by helping others, despite walking into a bloody trail. Her arc alone is enough to sell the deal that there are no limits when it comes to finding a way to overcome trauma. The second she found out the truth of her past, she dealt with it immediately rather than let it eat her up inside, which I deeply respect. With this being the true end of Freddy canonically with no cliffhanger, I hope Springwood really is healed. Having said as much good as I could, there are still a few things I didn't like at all during my re-watch due to not making much sense. The best example of it being illogical is Freddy containing himself in Springwood, yet allowing John to leave when he didn't have to. It even felt dumb that John didn't notice the newspaper clipping on him. Whether or not Fred planted it, I don't believe that John didn't check his pockets at all during the walk to the shelter. And if he and Doc were the only ones to truly believe in Fred before Maggie does, they should've stashed some meds for themselves to stay awake that work anywhere close to Hypnocil. Also, how is Freddy still alive if he was already defeated twice in the real world? Nancy was the first to pull him out and his remains were purified, so the demons he aligned with should've bailed him a long time ago. And the dumbest thing he ever does has to be having a basement where his secret tendencies remain, when it was a factory where he committed his crimes. These are honestly the hardest things to ignore and if you can, you are far more tolerable than me. To get this over with, Freddy's Dead is a sendoff so bad we had to get appropriate fan service to be pleased with the remainder of this legacy of a slasher franchise. If you really have been a tolerable fan at this point, good luck.