NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE are two of my favorite horror films. Every horror fan usually puts this one in the upper echelon of the series as well, but I had issues with it. My main beef with the film is that it was super light on Freddy. He just shows up and kills. I’d appreciate more of his personality here than the kids he is killing. I like that they brought back Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy, but she feels like she is really phoning it in. This could also be due to her dialogue. While I liked a lot of the actors: particularly Patrica Arquette, Laurence Fishburne, and Jennifer Rubin and the kills were interesting (particularly the veins as puppet strings and the caterpillar thing) it wasn’t enough for me to really dig this. I also didn’t think the “Dream powers” the kids had really worked or fit into the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET world.
