Dr. Maggie Burroughs works a youth correctional center helping troubled kids get their lives together and back on track. John Doe is the last surviving child of Springwood, Ohio, home of Elm Street. Home of Freddy Krueger. Freddy uses John Doe, letting him escape his clutches and run off to Maggies youth center. Freddy hopes to bring back some children to help him escape Springwood. More specifically, Freddy wants John to bring back HIS child. Does it work? Does Freddy escape and start his slaughter anew in a new town? Or is this truly the final nightmare? Well we all know it wasn't the last we saw of good old Freddy, but hey, the world could always use more Freddy.
Johns got a bad case of amnesia thanks to his run in with Krueger. Maggie discovers an article in his possession about the missing wife of Mr. Krueger in Springwood and thinks that taking John there will help spark his memory.
John slips into a sleep as they drive, once they pass the Springwood town borders, he wakes from his slumber pissed off that Maggie didn't keep him from sleeping, he looks at the road, little girl with pigtails, red ribbons in her hair warns them not to go on. He jerks the wheel from Maggies grip. She screams at him, telling him to wake up. The van spins out of control, Spence, a kid from the center, flies from the back of the van. Spence, Carlos, and Tracy were trying to escape the center and hid in the back of the van. They arrive at the town fair in search for a phone to tell the center that they will be on their way back. No kids, only adults. They all stare at the children, pulling away from them, whispering things about the children bringing "him" back. One woman nearly mauls the kids, screaming about missing her children, wanting them back. He husband pulls her away, the school bell rings, a sign that "he" knows there are children there.
That is the best part of this movie. This is Freddy at his peak. He has killed all the children of the town, the parents are broken, living in fear of him. He is a god here. And you can feel it. Its really eerie how the whole town is under his control. You know its his. Its stifling, its bleak. At this point his control is so great that he doesn't even need you to be dreaming to mess with you. The three castaway children are told to drive back to the center, but as they try to escape the town, they somehow always loop back. No matter what direction, they always come back. He won't let them leave. They give up and decide to find a place to sleep. They come to a house. On Elm Street.... THAT house.
This brings us to the dream sequences. Now the fact that Freddy has killed all the Springwood kids means that the kill count is pretty low for this movie, coming in at only three. But the dreams rate from bad to pretty good. First is Carlos. We see his personal hell. How he lost his hearing. Broken down Latino projects, his abusive mother, when he doesn't respond the way she wants she cleans his ears. Jabbing into them with Q-tips. Smacking his ears. The abuse he took. Then Freddy gives him his hearing back in the form of a Freddy brand hearing aide. Up until this point, the dream is great. But being the twilight years of the series, Freddy has gotten very kooky. So he uses Carlos super heightened hearing against him, torturing him with water droplets, pins falling, and ultimately, his bladed glove against a chalkboard, causing his head to explode.
John is afraid of heights. He continually wakes up in his room, finding that outside his house is nothing but sky and the earth far below. Freddy makes him get out of bed by setting the room on fire. He leaps from his window, falling towards the earth. He finds a ripcord which turns his shirt into a parachute. Freddy cuts the cord, telling him he is not Freddys child. Then Freddy sets up a nice bed for John to land on, a bed of spikes. He lands, impaled, and warns Maggie that Freddys child was not a boy.
Spence gets sucked into the TV, being the wastoid stoner he is. Then Freddy turns on his game. This is the worst of the dream sequences, its not scary, its just silly, and sadly by todays standards it hasn't aged well. But it does mention the Powerglove, so extra points there. It ultimately ends with Spence tumbling down some stairs to his demise.
Tracy was sexually abused by her father. Freddy knows it and makes her re-live that horrible experience. This is well done and the way they make her so much smaller than her dad makes him a million times more imposing. She manages to beat him down and escape by burning her arms on the stove.
And finally we have Maggie. She dreams, she enters Freddys mind, and she finds that she is his child. She watches as her mother is killed by her fathers hand. She explores his child murder dungeon. She sees his childhood, how he grew into the psychopath he became. How he made a deal with the dream demons to become godlike. And she eventually rips him back into the real world where she kills him with a pipe bomb. And that's it. That was supposed to be the end of Freddy. But he went on to move from movies to the real world and then finally fight his long time rival Jason Vorhees.
Some of the quirky humor aside, the movie is pretty good. Taking a slightly more serious tone than some of its previous entries. But then again, what would A Nightmare on Elm Street be without a little humor? All in all, I thinks its one of the better entries into this long running series. If you really need your Freddy fix and that lame new guy turned you from the series, check it out.
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