Five years after Freddy Krueger's first killing spree, he returns to torment a new batch of teenagers by possessing the body of Jesse Walsh, a young man whose family has just moved into the house from the original film. His girlfriend, Lisa, may be the only hope to free him from Freddy's control and end his bloody rampage.
Freddy's Revenge took the Nightmare series down a different route in terms of plot. Now, using possession, Freddy could enter the real world and kill people outside of their dreams. This kind of defeated the original premise of the series. The film, and its new twist, were not popular with fans. To this day, many consider this to be perhaps the worst of the Nightmare sequels; a notion I can only partially endorse.
Having read several online reviews of this film, it is notable how much time is spent by reviewers on the topic of the main character, Jesse, played by Mark Patton. Several criticisms are raised; 1. he is male 2. he is too feminine. It amazes me how many reviews literally openly complain that this film sucks because it has no female nudity and because they think the main character comes off as gay (even though he has a girlfriend). Give me a break. Aside from being bigoted morons, such reviewers are also about as easy to take seriously as a literature critic who condemns all books that don't offer illustrations.
Let's look at the actual movie for a moment. Freddy's Revenge marks the last sequel that will come for several years which will not be total camp. Some signs of the tendency towards the more marketable mash up of breasts and punch lines replacing suspense and horror are visible here. There are some totally ridiculous scenes like the bedroom cleaning montage and the belligerent sport equipment scene.
At the same time, aside from these unnecessary additions, the film over-all has a dark, spooky mood to it in contrast with the almost play full and jocular Freddy of later films. This is particularly true towards the end during Freddy's pool party massacre and Lisa's journey through the boiler room to try to save Jesse. Of course the whole love overcoming evil premise might been a bit cheesy especially given the context, but as per usual the door is left open for more sequels when it turns out Freddy isn't defeated after all.
A departure from the original? Yes. Spattered with cheesy scenes? Sure, it's from the 80's. But compared with many of the other sequels, this film does stay on target as an actual horror film for the most part and in that sense I think it is an underrated sequel.
3 boiling pools out of 5
Rated R: contains violence/gore, frightening scenes, language.
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