Wes Craven, creator of the original box-office smash sits here only as a producer. This schlock piece of hack work by nobody director Jack Shoulder, is a waste of both Craven's money and ours. "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2," additionally subtitled "Freddy's Revenge" follows five years in "screen time" since its predecessor (however, only one real year since the original).A teenage boy (Mark Patton) and his family move into the same house that Langenkamp's did in the original. With no air conditioning, it isn't very long before he's dreaming about Freddy, down in the furnace, turning up the heat. Here, Krueger uses the body as a flesh substitute to commit violent murders. And only with the help of his girlfriend (Kim Myers) can he overcome the horror, again to be left with an awkward and silly ending.
My question is what are these people who write this stuff smoking when they wrote it? All plausibility and atmosphere is ruined by pure idiocy like when Patton bumps into his jerk gym teacher at some kinky-transsexual bar. Leatherclad and all, the teacher brings him to the P.E. room to do push-ups and shower off. Um yeah, okay, maybe not! Everything remains at this level.
More often than not, this sequel is embarrassingly interrupted by plain dumb occurrances like having the family bird burst into flames, or having the mom and girlfriend walk in on Patton as he cornily dances on his bed to poor '80s music and walks around with a wooden object sticking out as if it were his penis.
The only piece of worthwhile information we are given about Krueger's history that will undoubtedly come up in additions sure to follow, is a little more origin: he kidnapped 20 children and brought them to the plant where he worked, and burned them alive. The movie is (as promised?) gruesome and gory, however so fake. A low-budget is fairly obvious with the bad effects, and nothing is very shocking nor scary.
The acting, so as to give it a label, is extremely non existent. Myers looks like a young Meryl Streep minus any acting ability, and Patton is as unexperienced as they get. He screams "gay" all over! I think Freddy was just an excuse he used in order to escape sex with her. (After all, he only ditched her to hide out at the hunkiest jock's house!!)Final Verdict: D-
eFilmCritic.com: Australia's Largest Movie Review Database. Privacy Policy | HBS Inc. | | All data and site design copyright 1997-2017, HBS Entertainment, Inc.