ANOES2 was a bad movie, and a massive blow to the ANOES
franchise. It was the sort of bad that causes studios to rethink what they were
doing, and they did, this time turning back to series creator Wes Craven for
assistance. He helped with the script and brought ANOES back to the nightmare
realm. The Dream Warriors is a bigger movie than the previous two, less so in
scope and scale but more in ambition and ideas. It essentially set out the sort
of style the rest of the films would follow, with its general look, nightmare
creativity and its version of Freddy. It’s a fun movie and basically shaped the
rest of the series.
A teenaged girl named Kristen (played by Patricia Arquette)
is attacked and injured by a man in her dreams. Thinking it’s a suicide
attempt, her mother has her interred in a psychiatric ward for troubled,
suicidal teens, all of whom are having horrific nightmares. Arriving at the
hospital is Nancy Thompson, now a child psychologist specialising in dreams and
nightmares. She recognises the nightmares as Freddy’s work, and strives to help
the teens survive and stop Freddy. Kristen has a special power – the ability to
pull other people into her dreams. When Freddy traps one of the teens in the
nightmare realm, the rest need to venture into their dreams and rescue him.
Kristen is our heroine, and she’s alright I guess. She’s not
as headstrong or capable as Nancy was, and spends a lot more time screaming
than she did. Asides from her dream power she doesn’t really do much, with
Nancy largely taking charge and saving the day. Heather Langenkamp, who played
Nancy in the original film, reprises her role here, now an older, more mature
Nancy. It’s a good way to bring back an old character, and having her as a
child psychologist specialising in dreams makes sense. She’s had experience
with Freddy before, so she can relate to the kids as she tries to help them
(though her help isn’t the best). John Saxon also reappears as her father, now
an alcoholic in complete denial that Freddy exists. There’s also a therapist at
the hospital named Neil who acts as Nancy’s love interest, helping to defeat
Freddy. He’s surprisingly open-minded when Nancy starts talking about entering
dreams.
The teens are made up of all sorts, though I can only
remember the names of a few (because they survive and appear in the sequel –
spoilers I guess). There’s the nerd in a wheelchair, the junkie girl, the smoking
girl, the mute (Joey), the sleepwalker and the tough black kid (Kincaid). It’s
a weird bunch, since a lot of their issues are pretty minor (sleepwalking?). I
know that they’re there for ‘suicidal tendencies’, but are sleepwalking and
smoking really enough to get you institutionalised? They're all there just to get killed, but at least they diversified them, however shallow.
There’s a bitchy lead psychiatrist at the asylum who is
terrible at her job. She tells the kids the dreams are about their guilt,
shames them and basically treats them like they’re all idiots. She wilfully
ignores all of their complaints, calling them weak and basically antagonising
them. They all say they can’t handle the nightmares, being highly distressed
and doing everything they can to avoid falling asleep, and her plan is to
sedate them. As they’re dying one by one, she insists on continuing with
treatment that plain isn’t working. For a hospital full of suicidal kids, the
staff members don’t seem to be on top of things – they leave the kids alone a
lot and never really check up on them, so I don’t know why they’re so surprised
when they end up dead. Lawrence Fishburne is a weird orderly who seems to care
about the kids, but also not like them at all. Oh man, Kirsten’s mom is a
bitch. I don’t know why asshole parents are a theme, but much like Nancy’s
useless drunk mom, Kirsten’s mother is more annoyed than concerned about her
daughter’s wellbeing. She’s not around for long at all, but she’s still a
horrible parent.
Nancy wants to prescribe an experimental drug, Hypnocil,
which prevents dreams. It doesn’t work, though it’s never really confirmed
whether they took the drug or not (it’s mentioned in passing, but nobody is
seen taking it), and they enter the nightmares, either voluntarily or
involuntarily by the end. To try and get the teens to understand the dream
world, she does a group hypnosis session to bring everybody into the same
dream. Of course it backfires when Freddy kidnaps one of the teens. I have to
say that the bitch doctor was completely right in one case – Nancy’s plan was
foolhardy and dangerous. It plain didn’t work, to the point that it gets a lot
of the kids killed. Sure, in the end they save the idiot mute, but Nancy, her
dad and most of the teens got killed in the process. I’m pretty sure the
hospital would be closed immediately after and all the staff fired and
blacklisted due to incompetence – a bunch of students and a therapist died in
the course of about three days.
Freddy is back and better than his last appearance. They’ve
completely ignored Freddy’s Revenge and it’s stupid ‘Freddy wants to possess
somebody and come to the real world’ storyline, and brought him back to the
nightmare-stalking killer he was before. This is the movie where Freddy got a
sense of humour, or at least where his quips and one-liners started, which is
essentially the iconic version of the character. I will say that Freddy himself
isn’t particularly frightening – the jokes sort of make the kills funny in a
dark way – but he is menacing and brutal. It’s confirmed now that he gets his
power from the teens he kills, whose souls are now trapped in his chest – their
screaming faces are embedded in his chest.
The way they defeat Freddy is a bit strange. He’s not
defeated in dreams, but instead by giving his remains a proper burial. While
Nancy and the teens go into the nightmare world to fight Freddy and save their
friend, Nancy’s dad and Neil go to recover Freddy’s remains and give him a
proper burial – they deduce that the only way to exorcise Freddy’s evil spirit
is by consecrating his remains. It does get silly when Freddy possesses his
skeleton and kills Nancy’s dad. If Freddy can possess his remains, then why
didn’t he ever do that before? It’s also silly in how he possesses his skeleton,
knocks out Neil, doesn’t finish him off but instead dumps about two shovelfuls
of dirt on him, then does a little victory pose and leaves his bones, so Neil
just wakes up a few seconds later and finishes the burial, defeating Freddy. So
freaking stupid.
Freddy also gets something of an origin story – while the
original film already did give a backstory to him (child killer murdered by
vigilante parents, returns as vengeful spirit to kill their children in
dreams), this time we go further back to explain why he was a child killer to
begin with. It’s because Freddy is the ‘bastard son of 100 maniacs’ – his
mother was a nun who was accidentally trapped in an insane asylum where she was
raped by the inmates and kept hidden for months, giving birth to Freddy. It’s a
bit of a bonkers explanation as to why he’d grow up to be a child killer, but
it’ll come up again in later movies.
It goes all out with its nightmare imagery, with each
nightmare being big and creative. This is something missing from the last two –
the first film’s nightmares were grounded more in reality, and the second film
barely had any. This one has a lot, and they’re more varied and imaginative. Freddy’s
house, where he killed the kids (a retcon from his supposed factory hideout in
Freddy’s Revenge) is a creepy locale that we’ll return to a few times. More
than locales, the way nightmares change and Freddy’s abilities within them are
much better. Nightmares work on nightmare logic, meaning your location can
suddenly change, walls and doors can disappear, and things like space and
gravity are essentially meaningless. A lot of the effectsa re hit and miss, but
there’s point for imagination. Freddy can transform into a worm monster and can
take different peoples forms to trick victims (at one point as Nancy’s dad to
kill her, another as a topless nurse to kidnap dumbass Joey). It also delves a
little more into how dreams and nightmares might work for the dreamer. Each of
the teens has some sort of special ability, based on what they like to dream
about. Turns out some of them have pretty lame dreams. The wheelchair nerd can
walk and has wizard powers (which don’t impress Freddy) while Kincaid suddenly
has the strength to bend plastic chairs. The junkie girl suddenly becomes
dressed up as a punk chick, complete with Mohawk hairstyle and flick knives.
The lamest is Kristen herself – she can do flips and cartwheels, big deal.
The kills are iconic and imaginative. While the first film’s
nightmare deaths were more gory and bloody, and the second was just mundane,
Dream Warriors goes more elaborate and creative. The sleepwalking kid has the
veins in his arms and legs pulled out by Freddy and is lead off the roof like a
puppet – I always found this horrific (I don’t like anything involving veins).
The junkie girl is forcibly injected with drugs (presumably heroin?) when
Freeddy’s fingers turn into syringes. It gets creepier when her veins start to
open and shut like mouths, but then gets funny with Freddy’s one liner (‘What a
rush!’). Actually Freddy’s one liners really make a lot of the kills. Probably
the most iconic death in the film is for the smoking girl. She watches a tv
talk show, which Freddy interrupts before transforming into the television and
slamming the girl’s head into the screen (‘Welcome to the primetime bitch!’).
This is usually considered one of the best sequels, and it’s
pretty easy to see why. It’s fun and imaginative. It’s a noticeable step up
from ANOES2, with better kills, more interesting nightmare visuals and it also
notes a change in the character of Freddy. It’s a bigger movie than the last
two, sacrificing some of the first film’s more intimate scariness for bigger,
more ridiculous set pieces, but it’s a fun direction for the series to take
after the mistake of Freddy’s Revenge. The movie has a pretty good pace as
well, spacing out the kills and nightmare scenes at perfect intervals. It is a
lot stranger and sillier than the original was, but it’s still a good, fun
sequel. It effectively undid the damage of Freddy’s Revenge and righted a
course for the future sequels to follow. Speaking of sequels, when giving his
writing input Wes Craven had intended for this to be the last one, ending it in
a way that defeated Freddy and left things fairly closed. There’s no final
scare, instead ending with a shot of a little papier-mâché model of Freddy’s
house, with the lights in the window suddenly turning on. Of course this film made money so more
sequels were made.
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