The opening scene of this film are very promising. The title music has a very sinister, menacing calm quality to it and there is an excellently nightmarish sequence in a school bus which is driven by Freddy.
A lot of people hate Nightmare on Elm Street 2. I am not going one of those. However, I'm also not enough of an adoring fan to ignore the fact that this film suffers a great deal as a result of the absence of Freddy's creator, Wes Craven, who was very adamant about wanting Nightmare to be a one-off horror movie.
But generally the film is a might-have-been. True, it has its moments, such as the discovery of Nancy's diary and the scene at the party, but things are pretty tame compared to the first film. Jesse is the new teenager living in Nancy's old house and haunted by nightmares, but apart from the opening sequence there are very few dreamlike effects. There are some nightmarish animals but they are too briefly seen and are in such total darkness that they're barely visible. The film is more of a cliched haunted house yarn than a story about nightmares. There are some interesting homosexual undertones but they are never really developed properly. There are also gaping plot-holes. After Freddy tears his way out of Jesse's body, the remains somehow return to life. The next time Freddy appears Jesse seems to be inside. Can anyone work out what's going on?
What really lets this film down is its weak ending. Freddy and his boiler room suddenly burst into flames because Jesse's girlfriend tells him she loves him. Utterly feeble. Surely the script-writers could have come up with a better ending than this.
Not an unwatchable film by any means, but just not the sequel it should have been.
5/10.
A lot of people hate Nightmare on Elm Street 2. I am not going one of those. However, I'm also not enough of an adoring fan to ignore the fact that this film suffers a great deal as a result of the absence of Freddy's creator, Wes Craven, who was very adamant about wanting Nightmare to be a one-off horror movie.
But generally the film is a might-have-been. True, it has its moments, such as the discovery of Nancy's diary and the scene at the party, but things are pretty tame compared to the first film. Jesse is the new teenager living in Nancy's old house and haunted by nightmares, but apart from the opening sequence there are very few dreamlike effects. There are some nightmarish animals but they are too briefly seen and are in such total darkness that they're barely visible. The film is more of a cliched haunted house yarn than a story about nightmares. There are some interesting homosexual undertones but they are never really developed properly. There are also gaping plot-holes. After Freddy tears his way out of Jesse's body, the remains somehow return to life. The next time Freddy appears Jesse seems to be inside. Can anyone work out what's going on?
What really lets this film down is its weak ending. Freddy and his boiler room suddenly burst into flames because Jesse's girlfriend tells him she loves him. Utterly feeble. Surely the script-writers could have come up with a better ending than this.
Not an unwatchable film by any means, but just not the sequel it should have been.
5/10.
