Freddy Krueger

Freddy's power comes from his ability to attack his victims in their dreams, able to inflict wounds that persist into the waking world. While in their dreams, Freddy is essentially the world's architect, able to create pathways that are impossible, and change his form. Above we see examples of both him changing his form to have extremely long arms, and able to emerge from Nancy's bathtub, and cause it to become extremely deep.

Freddy Krueger

Freddy loses his charm somewhat in Freddy's Revenge (Which really is what the first movie should have been called). While in the first movie he is tied very strongly to dreams, so much so that until Nancy pulls him from one of her own, he can't hurt anyone while they are awake. I think this made Freddy special and interesting, made how he attacks his victims hard to work around, but still very understandable and interesting. In Freddy's Revenge, however, he sheds this limitation, fully possessing Jesse, and using him as a host to bring most of the strong powers he held in the dream, into real life.

Something important we learn in this movie that coincides with the first, however, is that Nancy never died. She went crazy and her mother killed herself. I think this is very important information that we learn and I am glad it was added. It shows us that Freddy really did get his revenge (but in the first movie) by torturing the daughter if the woman that killed him and then ultimately making her kill herself. That is cool and I like that we get a solid conclusion to the first movie, rather than just being left with the weird car scene at the end.

That is another part that disappoints me with this movie, we have the same false victory ending as the first one, we believe that the protagonists have defeated Freddy through pure willpower, and we have a positive ending. However, (kind of as a weird parallel) Freddy turns out to be controlling the bus and sends the kids off into the desert as he did at the beginning of the movie. Both the first, and the second movie end with false-positive endings, and both have Freddy controlling the vehicle they are in to do so. I think the movie may have done better to end in the scene where Lisa kisses Freddy (which was very nasty) and he crumbles away to find Jesse inside. However, THIS is the plot twist, and after Jesse shakes off the crumbled shell encasing him, he embraces Lisa and stabs the heck out of her with the Freddy claw, showing us that Freddy's grasp on Jesse is indeed complete, and having Freddy toy with his victim one last time before heading off into the night.

The best scene in this movie (in my opinion) is the opening one, where Jesse and the girls are on the bus, and Freddy puts them in that rock spire situation. His slow crawl toward them, slowly dragging his claws along the seats and roof was unnerving and I think kept with his character of wanting to play with his prey, and this all occurred in a dream, which really is the deciding factor for me. They kept the character consistent here, and scary all the same. I would say the bath scene is still better, but this is a close second.

So ultimately Freddy stays just as maximally powerful as he is in the first movie, however, he loses his cool theme of affecting his victims through their dreams, and I think that really puts the movie down.

In my opinion, we see the best Freddy Krueger in this movie. He specifically targets the fears, or the crucial parts of his victims to torture and kill them like we see above and others. He has a focus on attacking in their dreams once more, which is fantastic, and he goes about this now by making the deaths all suicides, as if controlling them in their sleep. This is a step up from the kind of possession in Freddy's Revenge in my opinion, still having a focus on when they sleep, rather than a full possession like with Jesse.

We also see the return of Nancy and her dad, which put a big smile on my face. While many new characters are still added, maybe a few to many to really get attached to them, this is alright because most die pretty soon after being introduced. Nancy plays a big part in this movie, we learn what really happened to her family following the end of the first movie, and learn she decided to study dreams as she grew up, avoiding Freddy by taking a fake drug called Hypnocil. So many questions we were left with because of the second movie, are answered here.

Speaking of the second movie, it is never mentioned. Jesse and Lisa never come up, and I have no problem with this. The second movie really jumped off the rails with how Freddy worked, and I think getting back on the same track really helped this one. What I do not think helped was the full frontal nudity that Joey took part in. That shocked me as neither the first two movies had any, and while I can understand the use of it being on brand with Freddy being so sexual and for shock when she turns out to be Freddy with the creepy tongue, (and obviously for other reasons) I feel like it wasn't necessary.

Freddy is given a weakness in this movie, a real working weakness. It has to do with his ghost mom Saint Helena, who appears to Neil and tells him how to end Freddy, and some of his backstory. It turns out that Saint Helena was trapped in the criminally insane wing of this hospital, and was brutally raped by every inmate there for days. Freddy is the son of one of these men, but it is never known which. His weakness is his remains. If they are buried properly, then Freddy will be put to rest. However, these remains are resistant to being buried.

Freddy has a in real life form in this movie that, while I find a little silly, is still better than the past 2 iterations of Freddy IRL. In fact, this Freddy was a Skeleton! Being a true divergence from how Freddy has existed before, Skele Freddy is getting his own WITBU ranking.

Freddy Krueger (Skeleton Form)

Freddy takes a step back from his extravagant transformations from Dream Warriors, tending to mostly stay in his normal form, but occasionally taking a new costume such as the sunglasses or doctor's gown. He seems to have been weakened since his bones were buried, but not by much, able to quickly take out Kincaid (my favorite Dream Warrior) and Joey (trash tier Dream Warrior) very quickly. Kristin remains the only one able to pull others into her dreams, however, and Freddy wants to use this to his advantage. He tortures Kristen until she brings Emily into her dream.

I think we begin to understand the limits to Freddy's powers. He was tied to the Elm Street Kids because of their parents killing him, but beyond them, he can only attack others that are connected through the dreams of said kids. Because Kristin (stupidly) called Alice into her dream, Freddy now has a connection to Alice and is able to enter her dreams whenever he wants.

However, Kristin delivers two stupid moves in one dream. First, she brings in Alice, basically dooming her. Next, she gives Alice the ability to pull others into her dreams as well. Why would Kristin do this? She, for all intents and purposes, gave Freddy a new in with different kids. And he takes advantage of this new tie to Alice's group of friends, killing off Sheila, Rick, and Debbie, using their personalities to construct each of them their own nightmare.

We also learn a little bit about the reason Freddy might exist. We hear during Alice's class that Aristotle thought dreams were a passage for the soul and that there were two gates, the positive and the negative gate, and a gatekeeper that protects them. Freddy then says later during his fight with Alice, "I have been guarding my gate for a long time". I don't take this as concrete evidence this is true, as it could just be some trash talk from Freddy, but it is one possible answer.

Ultimately Alice defeats Freddy, releasing the souls from him, and escaping the dream alive. He returns as a reflection in a fountain just before the movie ends, as is to be expected, another quote from Freddy I do take to be true, "I am eternal". It seems no matter what is done to him, Freddy remains.

Freddy has awoken again, however in a much weaker form than we are used to. He continues to use Alice to attack and kill her friends, however, there are some odd occurrences.

Freddy is reborn in a mangled, almost unfinished state, his arm falling off, and his leg skinny and weak. However, he is still able to jump into the dream of Dan after his rebirth in Alice's dream, a literal rebirth, seeming to use Alice as a surrogate for Amanda.

Dan is attacked with dreams of vehicles attacking him, and I love this considering the crash that wounded Dan so badly in the last movie. Dan is killed, slamming into an oncoming truck, his vehicle exploding and catching fire. Next to bite the dust was Greta, being stuffed full of food. After this, Alice mentions in the movie that she is confused about how Freddy was able to attack Dan and Greta while she was awake, however, I think I have the answer to this.

Freddy must connect to outside dreams from his host. Originally, he could attack any of the Elm Street Kids, but with their final death with Kristin, he was passed onto Alice, who was also given the ability to bring others into her dreams. If we can agree that Freddy can jump into the dreams of people closely connected to the host while the host is asleep, how did Greta and Dan die?

Dan had already been given a connection to Freddy in Elm Street 4 when he and Alice were in the dream together. So with Dan, I don't even understand Alice's confusion. Greta however never had a connection to Freddy, and Alice was awake. HOWEVER. I think Freddy is smarter than he is given credit. Something I thought was heavily overlooked in the 4th movie was Alice's daydreaming. It never seemed to come up as something Freddy could use but was still something that was given lots of time on screen for the viewer to think about. I think this is what happened with Greta, that Alice was daydreaming, and along with their connection as friends, added up to something Freddy could take advantage of. Marc just fell asleep. So did Yvonne. No problems there.

Jacob was an interesting addition, having the baby be something Freddy could affect before it was even born. I liked this idea, and I think it is again another more acceptable way Freddy could have entered the waking world again, but it is left unclear whether he succeeded in this attempt, as it seemed Amanda absorbed him again and locked him away.

Speaking of Amanda! She is a ghost, and deserves her own ranking I think!

Amanda Krueger / Sister Mary Helena

Freddy's Dead. Wow. I think this one is possibly the worst. Worse than Freddy's Revenge. A note to would-be Freddy Krueger filmmakers, if you think about putting Freddy in the title, just scrap it. Scrap the whole movie. Both movies that had "Freddy" in the title were leaps and bounds worse than the Bad Dreams story-line.

That being said, there were still some fun elements. Video game Freddy I thought was cool. I liked Carlos, I think he was underused as he has just the right amount of camp. But the acting overall was definitely subpar. Maggie felt very flat and unemotional, there were some very unexpected outbursts of anger which I don't feel made sense, and Freddy broke the third wall at one point, shushing the camera while taunting Carlos. From what I remember this is the only occasion he does this, and I don't think it works. I feel like someone like Freddy wouldn't just shush the camera if he was aware he was in a movie. I feel like knowing how little real strength he has would be deflating for someone so high on his own power.

The basic premise of the movie is that John is the last kid alive from Springwood, and is transported by Freddy to the town his daughter is living at, to use her as a host and continue killing kids. The idea of Freddy having a daughter was never brought up before this, and I am unsure if it makes sense? He was never said to have a wife either, and if he killed his wife, I think it would have been brought up at some point.

Just a very disappointing final movie, and seemed like a parody almost. I look forward to a redemption ark in the spin-offs and the remake.