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In a bizarrely misguided twist, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge failed Freddy Krueger with the movie’s bland real-world-set finale. The point of Freddy Krueger, the monstrous dream demon of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, is that he can invade the subconscious of sleeping teenagers. This makes his victims uniquely vulnerable, stranded in a dream world where they are at the mercy of Freddy’s powers. The Nightmare on Elm Street villain isn’t particularly scary in the real world, yet the first sequel in the horror movie franchise made the early mistake of bringing Freddy into this realm.
Where the likes of Halloween’s Michael Myers and Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees have hulking strength and an un-killable supernatural aura on their side, Freddy Krueger is simply a scrawny janitor when stripped of his dreamworld setting. As such, the ending of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge made a huge mistake when the sequel opted to take Freddy out of the dream world and into reality.
The climax of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge features Freddy attacking teens at a real-world pool party, completely disregarding the whole “nightmare killer” shtick that is theoretically what makes him unique and scary. As a smaller, slighter villain, Freddy can’t take on Jason’s Friday the 13th modus operandi of stabbing, beating, and choking teens to death as the bizarre finale proved. Instead, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 showed Freddy using some hitherto-unmentioned fire powers in the real world, throwing fireballs and boiling the pool’s water before party goers can escape. However, it is unclear what powers Freddy has in the real world and why the teens can’t overpower him in this scene, making the finale more confusing than effective.
