2 out of 5

Directed by: Jack Sholder

While it doesn’t do much with the ‘attacks you in your dreams’ concept that made the original unique, Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s script, by David Chaskin, does a commendable job of trying to evolve the Freddy mythos without just repeating the tricks of the first film – Freddy’s goal here being to take over the body of a dreamer to conduct his kills in real, non-dream time.  Combined with cult director Jack Sholder, who’s patient pans and sense of space and, perhaps, a willingness to allow for pauses borne of a quick shooting schedule (just guessing), the sequel also has its own feel and look, separate from film one but not a generic horror knock-off either.

And some elements I would actually consider improved: Christopher Young’s creepy, ambient-esque score heightens the tone much more than Charles Bernstein’s more whimsical themes from the original.  And dare I say, though Craven is certainly responsible for giving us the classic Kruger look, Sholder shoots him better, letting shadows do their work and ditching the sorta’ circus-freak vibe of NoES for a more sinister, gravelly voiced bogeyman.

Not that the film is very good, mind you.  A confirmed homoerotic subtext to the script is interesting but never feels fully logically applied or consistent enough to seem ‘smart’.  Instead we just get odd moments like a teenage character wandering out to an S&M bar in the middle of the night.  And the body-snatcher plotline, similarly, just isn’t well married to or properly evolved from the dream-theme.  Understood that you don’t need to re-explain the logic to us, but you would to the lead character, and there’s never a clear line drawn from dreams to real life for our lead (Mark Patton, playing Jesse) to really grasp what’s going on – much less accept it as quickly as he does.  This makes a later scene, mirroring Langenkamp / Depp’s scene, of Jesse wanting to fall asleep and asking a friend to stay awake seem… pointless in the context of the film, and only inserted because of the viewer’s experience.  We also have no real connection with a Why: sure, Mark’s family has moved into Nancy’s house, but Freddy seemed partially driven by revenge before.  This time, he’s just a killer.

Still, things were holding on to a quirky little sensibility, until things began to unravel rather dramatically in the flick’s final third.  Kim Myers as Mark’s love interest, Lisa, is rather atrocious, and as ‘love saves the day’ (or part of the day) toward the end, her on-screen presence is increased and it’s not a good thing.  Whatever freedom in the acting that Sholder encouraged / allowed that provided these frequent pauses in dialogue or emotion, with Myers, it comes across as her staring blankly at something off-screen, waiting for a cue.  Nevermind that there’s no actual relationship built between these two characters (they are friends at film’s start, then have an aborted love-making sequence during a Freddy attack), so protestations of love in order to ward off Freddy just seemed to come out of nowhere.  So as things should be ‘ramping up’ in our conclusion, it instead becomes sillier and sillier and less interesting, carrying on as such for just long enough to knock it down a peg from three stars to two.

Lastly, some budget problems.  Maybe they just didn’t have the right practical FX crew, or maybe Sholder blew his budget on some larger sets (the final setting – a massive factory – is, indeed, impressive, and a pool party gone awry earlier in the flick has a lot going on), but, let’s say it, there’s not really a lot of gore.  Some transformation goop (Freddy bursting from ‘neath Mark’s skin, pretty cool), but there’s all of these poorly blocked slashes that never sell the action too well and cheapen it up.

More ingenuity than your average horror sequel, but hobbled enough by its B-movie sensibilities and lack of creating viewer investment in the characters to qualify NoES 2 as a solid ‘meh’.