Hey horror fans, it’s me, Slick Dungeon! Well, we’ve made it to the end, the final nightmare! Freddy’s dead right in the title so this has to be the last one. (Checks notes) Uh.. except for the three other films made after Freddy was dead? Anyway, if you haven’t caught on yet, I’m here to review the last of the main series of A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. Be warned there will be spoilers ahead so if you haven’t seen the movie yet go watch it, try to get out of town in your beat up van, get lost at least three times, go to sleep, realize you are having nightmares, and come on back here and read the review just to stay awake.

One would think after the events of the fifth movie in this series we might check up on Alice and her son from the last movie but that’s not where we go at all. This film is set ten years in the future. Springwood where the events of the first five movies took place has no more children living there and all of the adults have gone insane. In other words, Freddy has won. But there is one teenager left. This is John Doe who at the beginning of the movie has a nightmare and is thrown outside of the town limits by Freddy. John wakes up not remembering anything about himself but knowing with absolute certainty he needs to stay awake and Springwood is a bad, bad place to be.

John is taken to a shelter where there are a few other teenagers down on their luck for various reasons. One of the workers there, Maggie, sees a newspaper article John had with him and knows the best way to find answers is to go to Springwood. She packs John up and three other teenagers stow away in the van.

You probably know what happens next once everyone is in Springwood. This is Freddy’s domain so he can invade dreams and because he seems to have the run of the town he can even prevent people from leaving, which he does.

The movie actually does a decent job of giving the teenagers some character and personality here. And the film gives more backstory about Freddy, including that he had a daughter who was taken away from him. It seems Freddy was into some pretty bad stuff even before they took his daughter but because the town did is at least in part why he keeps killing kids in Springwood.

Turns out Freddy needed John to bring back his adult daughter so he could go on to the next town and continue to spread his nightmares. There’s also a bit of a backstory about some dream entities that gave Freddy his powers.

While the story goes along fine and there are some scares, there’s also a fair amount of silliness in this one. That’s mostly been a part of these movies but it was usually scares over jokes but this one feels like the comedy is a bit more pronounced.

And this movie was originally created to be shown in 3-D so the last act with the final confrontation against Freddy just feels really awkward now. There’s a lot of staring at hands and waving pointy things right at the camera which may have worked with the original release but now just seems gimmicky and pointless. It’s an unfortunate end for what was almost a fine send off.

As always, the best part of the movie is Robert Englund doing his whole Freddy thing. In this one it’s nice because he does get a good amount of screen time without all of the makeup so you can see that he is a good actor even without all the makeup and effects.

If you’ve watched all the rest of the Freddy films this is definitely worth watching, just be prepared for an awkward third act.

I had seen all of these movies before but I actually haven’t watched most of the reboots, remakes, and whatnots so I’m really interested to see where those are going.

Nightmarishly yours,

Slick Dungeon