A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. The inevitable
sequel was rushed into production and in that tradition I will be quick with
this little blog. For real this time.
Five years after the first movie Jesse's family moves into
Nancy's old house. Jesse dreams of Fred Krueger telling him to kill for him as
a human host. Jesse struggles with reality and the emerging darkness of Freddy within
him.
This movie has been criticized for many things the main
complaint is changing the dynamic of Freddy Krueger. I agree with this
complaint since he is no longer is he killing teens creatively through
nightmares, he's possessing a conflicted teen boy and using him as an avatar to
kill in the waking world. While the Freddy character presence is felt throughout
the movie, his screen time is limited. I
admire the risk taking in creating what should have been a more personal and
cerebral story but ultimately it missed the mark and the complex nature of the
mythology set up in the first movie.
I want to talk about the ineffective parents and the focus
of Freddy's attacks as I did in the first movie. We also need to touch on the subject
of the movie's "homoerotic subtext". Luckily they are all connected
this time. This time around our villain attacks males nearly exclusively.
There's only one explicit female death as part of the twist ending. The male
adults are incredibly obtuse and domineering. There's a ton of male humiliation,
light bondage, and questioning of physical desires. Jesse is depicted in a way
where it appears that he's a closeted homosexual. I'll acquiesce and say
possibly bisexual, but a lot of his conflict is related to his beard, Lisa.
Truth be told I was a little disappointed when he and Lisa started making out, luckily
Freddy begins to mess with Jesse at that moment causing him to run away. He
ends up hovering over friend Grady's bed. Grady calls him out on it too and
well "Freddy" kills him for it. Is there a "gay" story in
Freddy's Revenge? Of course. The question is, why does that merit negative
criticism?
An interesting note about this male centric story (besides
the fact that Freddy took no revenge despite the title) is that secondary
character Lisa is the one that defeats Freddy and saves our protagonist. A
little disappointing since we spent so much time with Jesse's personal struggle
we want him to be the one that wins. The truth of the matter is that Jesse and
Lisa's love for each other is what saved them. I'm cool with that, I just hope
that we're not given this ending as " a gay man needs a good woman to put
him on the right path" message.
So there you go. It's not a bad movie but our expectations
hurt us going in. We wanted more of the magic from Nightmare 1, and we got
conflicting message about a conflicted character.
Watch this space for more scattershot thoughts and mental
meanderings from my mutated brain.
-Bobgar
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