Often people will have low expectations going into a film like FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE. How good can the sixth installment of any series be, let alone a string of low-budget frightfests? Yet I am not of the belief that horror series are doomed to run out of steam. Heck, I think Friday THE 13TH got better with age. But although I had an open mind while watching what was supposedly the last NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET film, I found it a bitter disappointment in every way.
Once again, our favorite grotesquely-disfigured dream stalker is after a group of teens, dispatching them one by one as they sleep. Yet none of the creativity or style of the previous films is present. Whatever happened to sequences such as the waterbed from Part 4 or the marionette from Part 3? It's as though producers cobbled this together just for the sake of making another Freddy film.
Other shortcomings abound. While other NIGHTMARE entries have been nothing short of brilliant at making the most of a limited budget, FREDDY'S DEAD looks the cheapest of them all. This is especially true when we see a younger Freddy meet the computer-generated dream spirits. It was reminiscent of a third-rate Saturday morning children's show. Humor was attempted here, with cameos by Johnny Depp and Roseann Arnold and a video game sequence with Freddy at the joystick, but it all falls flat. The acting is stale and Rachal Talalay directorial debut uninspired.
The finale is a particular disappointment. Of all the memorable ways Freddy has been killed in previous films, is having his daughter turn his own glove against him the best they could come up with? Granted, the idea of bringing the killer into the real world was a good one, but its potential was not fully explored.
Overall FREDDY'S DEAD is arguably one of the worst -- if not the worst -- films in this popular saga. And yes, that includes Part 2 and the overly artsy DREAM CHILD. One has to believe that if they had it to do all over again, the people behind this film could come up with something a lot better than this.
