If you thought the two entries into the series before Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare were bad, then this comes close to blowing them out of the water spectacularly. Not quite, though, but the trickle in quality has all but run dry by the sixth instalment of this lengthy film series. An asinine exploration yet again of Freddy’s backstory, coming close to absolutely futile and useless in what it looks to present. Even the most hardcore of Elm Street and Krueger fans will have trouble making it through this mess in one piece. A clumsy slasher that looks to bring us a switch in narrative so poor that you’ll be rooting for Freddy by the bitter end to this franchise.
With Robert Englund being let loose once more to flex his comedic chops and one-liners, moments that feel worthwhile are few and far between. There’s no denying how charming and confident an actor Englund is, but he tries to balance too much here. New developments of the Freddy character thrown into some comedic moments, completely unknown characters brought in to serve relatively important roles, and never to be mentioned again. It’s the hallmarks of a series on its knees, bereft of ideas and unable to figure out which way it would like to go. At one end, you have Krueger’s comedic antics, finalising his change from haunting nightmarish monster to jumper wearing nuisance. But at the other, there’s a great deal of effort going into building up his backstory, similar to that of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.
A new cast of characters, yet again, makes for a difficult entry into the film. Aside from Englund, no leading characters are returning, and we’re strapped to some uninspired juveniles who find themselves in a hospital reminiscent and ripped-off from A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors. This inability to come up with something new for the series kills more or less all momentum for me. If I’d wanted to see Krueger creep around the nightmarish hallways of a hospital, then I’d have retraced my steps to the third in the series. This feels like a washed-up cast fumbling their way through the dark. This time around, we have a whole host of characters who feel like complete husks of what they represent. One-note characters that tick off the tropes of the early 90s horror flick.
Outdated references coming out of the woodworks at almost every venture, a surprisingly confusing and a difficult to follow plot that loses itself to the cringe-inducing special effects, poor one-liners and awful sound effects. Completely irredeemable from start to finish, not a single second worth watching in this one as the Nightmare on Elm Street series finally bleeds out into a clumsy, ill-fitting conclusion.
