Horror Movie Review: Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

So here we are…the final Nightmare movie & the one that finally kills off one of the most iconic horror movie characters ever. At least for a while, anyway…Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare started life as the final Nightmare movie but the success saw the franchise continue briefly afterwards.

The last film was made in 1989 & this one dropped 2 years later however in the movie it is actually set 12 years after the events of the 5th movie. Freddy Krueger has decimated Springwood & murdered every child in it except for one. This guy is having a full on Freddy nightmare that messes around with black comedy (fails badly at it). Freddy sends the teen through to the next town but with a bad case of amnesia.

“Be a good little doggy and go fetch”.

Freddy wants the teen, the final Springwood child to bring him new victims. His plan works perfectly as the boy ends up at a youth shelter for troubled teens. There he meets Maggie who has some secret connection to Springwood that even she doesn’t understand. Wanting to help him recover his memory she works out his path & takes him back to Springwood alongside Carlos (abused & has a hearing impairment), Spencer (drug addict with controlling father) & Tracey (abused by her father).

See a trend here?

In Springwood the group discover that the adults are all mental having lost their children (look out for some famous faces here). Attempting to leave they find that they are in a constant loop & there is no escape. They delve deeper & discover that Freddy Krueger had a child that was taken from him after his murder trial.

Soon after Freddy begins his attack on the group & their only hope seems to be discovering the identity of his child.

It becomes painfully obvious who his child is early on which makes for a ‘light on impact’ revelation. Other than some cool flashbacks showing Freddy living a ‘normal’ life it doesn’t add much except a route to end his life once & for all.

The final part of this movie was originally shot in 3D which was a cool concept back in 1991. The characters putting the glasses on in the movie to see into his world was a well-thought out prompt but you won’t really notice any difference while watching it without the glasses.

Freddy’s Dead gets a lot wrong & takes the series so far from horror it’s embarrassing at times. It constantly tries to play around with comedy elements but won’t raise the slightest chuckle as it isn’t funny. The few deaths we get are the worst of the bunch with the computer game/Nintendo power glove cringe-worthy watching.

The gore that does show up is in sharp contrast to the comical tone & it makes it a tad bit more unsettling but most of the effects are average. It just lacks everything that makes a Nightmare movie good. Compare this to the original it is shocking to see just how far from horror it has gone.

The thing is it does have moments including some cameos from Alice Cooper & Johnny Depp. Robert Englund does a stand-up job with the material he is given & you can at least say that the ending was pretty damn final.

Unsurprisingly this is the worst Nightmare movie of the bunch that deviates so far from the original idea that it’s all too easy to dismiss this as nothing more than a cash grab.