A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 : FREDDY'S REVENGE (1985)

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE (1985)

Tagline: Someone is coming back to Elm Street!

(Horror, Nightmares, Pool Parties) [R]

Fight it, Jesse! You created him. You can destroy him! He is living off of your fear, Jesse. Fight him.

Okay, so it didn’t take long before fans were clamoring for more NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. So the second installment came out just a year after the 1^st and has by 80’s standards had a LOT more actual nightmare sequences than its predecessor. Just the opening scene alone looks like it might have cost what the entire budget of the first installment did (kidding, but it was pretty cool).

In this one, a new family moves into the house on Elm Street (boo, what the crap, where’s Nancy at? It doesn’t take long before kids start dreaming about a child Freddy’s killed and Jesse is just sweating a lot and freaking out. Freddy’s bright idea in this one is to try and possess Jesse (yeah that’s my name, so for most of this movie I was thinking “What, just leave me alone!”) in an effort to start killing people outside the dream world. To a large extent this works including a pool party gone wrong.

This movie does a lot of things right.

1) The opening. I loved it, the ending was almost great.

2) Kim Myers (Lisa) is pretty good in this but at times it feels like she is so outacting everyone around here that it comes across as being too much.

3) The sets and effects. From a mood standpoint this movie is pretty well done, even the parents and choices in music are perfect for the time period (even down to the STRAY CATS poster in one of the scenes. Nice touch set guys and gals).

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 gives hints that the writers of this series were not necessarily trying something new and inventive with Freddy, but that they simply had already run out of ideas. When the movie is actually called “NIGHTMARE” there simply isn’t a reason to have Freddy come into the real world yet (we already know what he does in the dream has real-world effects). The plot almost feels like a victim of itself, but for me, this particular issue was overcome by strong visuals and pretty decent acting for a flick like this.

I give this movie a 4 out of 7 for effort and effects alone.