⭐️⭐️1/2
Ten years into the future (so, 1999 I believe) the entire population of children and teens has been wiped out in Springwood, OH by the fashion-forward kid-killer with that oh-so-familiar razor-tipped glove. Evidence comes to light of one surviving teen and that means old Fred Krueger (Englund, obviously) has more work to do. A weakening dream demon is getting desperate and the amnesiac teenager is just the thing old burn-face needs to escape the confines of his hometown and go worldwide with his campaign of terror… but not for the reason you think. Ya see, Freddy has an offspring and this offspring just so happens to be a counselor at a facility for troubled youth. I think this is supposed to be a surprise but if it is they do a horrible job of making it a twist. Maggie Burroughs has a group of kids under her care who are now prime candidates for Freddy’s particular style of ridiculous murder because she decides taking the kid with no memory back to Springwood is the best way to get him remembering. Of course, the other kids in her care have snuck aboard the van to attempt an escape. Uh oh. Fuckin’ Yaphet Kotto is hanging around as a kindly doctor pushing for dream therapy treatment, a young Breckin Meyer gets high, Johnny Depp cameos as himself, Alice Cooper cameos as Grandpappy Krueger and Tom Arnold shows up alongside notable racist Rosanne Barr as some of the mentally ill adults of Springwood. It’s a very dumb time that doesn’t take itself seriously which is more fitting to its wise-ass villain but also doesn’t offer up interesting protagonists that the series had previously put some effort towards. Hell, even the worst of the bunch (that would be Part 2) offered up some depth to its limited cast. Here, they kind of feel a bit more like kids Jason would be hacking apart. The slasher bubble had well and truly burst by this time with the usual boogeymen wandering around in their death throes. Diminishing returns on the familiar threats were a problem which is why the last hurrah of these creeps had to change things up. In ‘93 we got the undervalued Jason Goes to Hell, ‘95 gave us whatever the fuck The Curse of Michael Myers was and ‘94 blessed us with the refreshingly meta New Nightmare but this one came before them and pointed in the direction that the slashers we fell in love with through the eighties had ran out of steam. It’s not unwatchable and there’s even some bits I look back on fondly but it also shows that you can only beat a dead horse for so long.
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