A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

I wrote my original review without having seen it for 20 years. I was going off memory. Having now rewatched it (because I’m showing them to one of my teenage kids), my opinion has changed somewhat. The performances are far better than I remember. Mark Patton really does a good job selling the terror of Freddy trying to take over his body. The movie also does a fantastic job setting a tone of dread and panic, and uses the “is it a dream/reality” trick to great effect here. But the logic issues still remain. The movie still gives Freddy a new set of powers that he never uses again, and can’t even use consistently within the movie. And he’s defeated by a Huey Lewis song, which is just dumb. And the ending is a lame jump scare that wants you to think it’s in the real world. One more thing: the homosexual subtext. It’s not nearly as prevalent as memory led me to believe. I mean, yeah, the bar/shower scene, the coach, and the dance are hard to deny. But they don’t thread through the entire movie as blatantly as those scenes (which are blips on the radar). As for the rest of the movie and it being subtext, eh, you can choose to see it that way or not. YMMV. I can see it, but I can also see it as body horror and demonic possession. It doesn’t make or break the movie for me. Not that it would be bad if it was more prevalent; I’m all for LGBTQ+ representation in horror. It just isn’t the big gay horror movie a lot of people say it is. Overall, better than I thought … but still not great.