I saw :
Yup, the fifth nightmare on Elm Street movie. This one has Alice from the previous movie in it and - spoiler alert - she's pregnant with a child. The unborn child is dreaming and Freddy uses those dreams to get to Alice and her friends.
Again, not a brilliant film, but perfectly enjoyable and entertaining. I see the imdb score is a mere 4.7 which I find a bit puzzling. I think I had as much fun with this as I did with the fourth. The kills are just as outrageous if not even more than they were in the fourth (more extravagant with each sequel seems to be the general trend). Especially Dan's motorbike scene, what was that? A lot of the movie is a bit surreal and we get more nice 80s special FX scenes than in the previous films. Despite funny kills, the movie is a little bit dark, but I think only a child would find it scary. It also includes some insight glimpze Freddy's past and his mother Amanda is again included in the story.
All things considered (it's an 80s horror somewhere way down the line sequel in a horror franchise etc), it's a fine film. The only part I didn't like so much was the ending, but meh - I knew I had more Freddy in store anyways.
And then I saw this one
This one was quite different from the other sequels. Above all else, they've changed the whole feel of the Freddy setting and turned it into more of a comedy. This change has been going on across the sequels, but this film takes a bigger stride towards comedy than it's predecessors. Also, it doesn't seem to worry much about being consistent with reality in any way, even when we're in the real world and not the dream world. In a word, it's sillier.
The story is also different because this one takes place long after the events of the 5th movie. A John Doe suffering from amnesia (Alice's dream child perhaps?) is a survivor from Springwood, a town where all other kids have been killed by Freddy. A therapist, Maggie, working with the kid and some other troubled youth that tag along end up in Springwood where they get familiar with Freddy once again and it turns out the therapist and Freddy, once repressed memories surface, share a relationship from the past.
This movie starts
in medias res as we're dropped right into a surrealist nightmare. Then follows the standard formula more or less, people follow a story which includes them falling asleep and they subsequently get killed by Freddy. The makers of this film had probably realized that the franchise had gotten a bit silly and instead of aiming for horror, they aim for something between a horror and a comedy. The result is a movie which concerns itself less with realism. The acting is lame and the story is incredible. There are very few characters that seem like they could be real in this film. Some are obviously just cows for the slaughter and we don't tie any bonds with them before they get killed. It still manages to entertain and it's fun to see all the crazyness that goes on in dreamland.
What I like about this film is that we get to see Robert Englund also without his typical melted skin getup. We see a lot of different Freddys as we see several glimpses from the past. In the end, spoiler warning, Freddy gets killed. This happens more or less in all the films, but this time it seems more final. I'll say the ending was rather dumb and not a dignified way to kill off such an iconic character, but I still have one more film to watch so I know I'll see Freddy again. Although my angle may seem a bit negative, the movie was entertaining and I'd say worth checking out for those interested in Freddy. Perhaps especially since this reveals more of his background than the others .. and it's not like you expect oscar material from these flicks, so who cares about realism or acting, right?
The next will be Wes Craven's New Nightmare. It sounds to me like it's a bit more of a spinoff than anything relating to what goes on in the sequels, so I guess that makes this
a final film if not THE final film in the franchise.