Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:19 pm
There are two reasons to check this film out :
1) The end theme was done by Dokken. Just fucking wow. Dokken.
2) There was a scene in this movie that made me cringe. Not the way I cringed when Jon Voight tried to do an accent in "Anaconda," but cos the scene was extremely disturbing to me.
Anyhow, Wes Craven takes back story & screenplay duties here, which makes a fucking world of difference compared to the previous bowel movement, Nightmare II.
The good :
The death scenes kick ass. TVs, puppeting people by their muscle tendons, ripping the D&D nerd's heart out of his chest, decapitations, & more. Gold star for the person that can tell me which death scene I'm referring to in (2) above.
The characters have a bit of depth. It isn't Oscar-winning development by any means, but it's a billion times more than 99% of the horror sequels in existence. You actually feel a bit of sympathy for the kids.
The director & Craven manage to establish a definite mood & work it in an over-the-top manner which somehow plays out wonderfully. Robert Englund gives Freddy the real verbal blades to match the physical ones on his hand.
The special effects & makeup are damned impressive for 1987. This include, but are not limited to, decent claymation, animatronic Freddys (TV-Freddy, Freddy snake), to an animated Freddy's skeleton beating the shit out of folk. Hell, I'll definitely give props to the set design fuckers, too.
The bad :
The plot works in about every supernatural camp trick you can imagine. Vengeance from beyond the grave, insane asylum patients running wild, Christian mythology, ghosts, eating souls, holy water as a weapon, astral projection, etc., all make an appearance; seemingly, they come from nowhere.
Some of the dialogue is almost painful to hear. Not as great a volume as you might think, but when it shows up, it hurts.
The ugly :
This is still a standard stalk-&-slash flick. The protagonists are disposable & get split up too often & easily. Nothing really new gets brought to the cookie cutter formula introduced since the first slasher flicks.
The ? :
Fucking Dokken. Just...goddamn. There's no way in hell they sang that song in one shot. No one could keep a straight face belting out those lyrics.
Despite this being something that's been done thousands of times, this variation happens to be done well. This is easily the second strongest sequel of the big three horror franchises.
Stars : ***
Give it a check one night.
1) The end theme was done by Dokken. Just fucking wow. Dokken.
2) There was a scene in this movie that made me cringe. Not the way I cringed when Jon Voight tried to do an accent in "Anaconda," but cos the scene was extremely disturbing to me.
Anyhow, Wes Craven takes back story & screenplay duties here, which makes a fucking world of difference compared to the previous bowel movement, Nightmare II.
The good :
The death scenes kick ass. TVs, puppeting people by their muscle tendons, ripping the D&D nerd's heart out of his chest, decapitations, & more. Gold star for the person that can tell me which death scene I'm referring to in (2) above.
The characters have a bit of depth. It isn't Oscar-winning development by any means, but it's a billion times more than 99% of the horror sequels in existence. You actually feel a bit of sympathy for the kids.
The director & Craven manage to establish a definite mood & work it in an over-the-top manner which somehow plays out wonderfully. Robert Englund gives Freddy the real verbal blades to match the physical ones on his hand.
The special effects & makeup are damned impressive for 1987. This include, but are not limited to, decent claymation, animatronic Freddys (TV-Freddy, Freddy snake), to an animated Freddy's skeleton beating the shit out of folk. Hell, I'll definitely give props to the set design fuckers, too.
The bad :
The plot works in about every supernatural camp trick you can imagine. Vengeance from beyond the grave, insane asylum patients running wild, Christian mythology, ghosts, eating souls, holy water as a weapon, astral projection, etc., all make an appearance; seemingly, they come from nowhere.
Some of the dialogue is almost painful to hear. Not as great a volume as you might think, but when it shows up, it hurts.
The ugly :
This is still a standard stalk-&-slash flick. The protagonists are disposable & get split up too often & easily. Nothing really new gets brought to the cookie cutter formula introduced since the first slasher flicks.
The ? :
Fucking Dokken. Just...goddamn. There's no way in hell they sang that song in one shot. No one could keep a straight face belting out those lyrics.
Despite this being something that's been done thousands of times, this variation happens to be done well. This is easily the second strongest sequel of the big three horror franchises.
Stars : ***
Give it a check one night.