Director: Samuel Beyer

Budget: $35million

US Box Office: $115.6million

• Ok, it’s the end of the road, I’ve got my DVD, I’ve got my laptop to type on, I’ve got my cous cous. Let’s do this!
• Sudden thought: what if it’s worse than Freddy Vs. Jason?
• OMG what if it’s worse than Final Nightmare?
• Creepy opening credits, already feeling unsettled. The cast names appear on screen as normal, then appear written in the background in chalk in children’s handwriting.
• Okay the first person we see is male. Kind of strange as I liked that Nightmare was female focused and yet never really made them seem like victims. Was a nice change. But still, I suppose 2015 isn’t as progressive as the 1980’s.
• Or I’m wrong and I can just quit whining. Yeah, let’s go with that.
• “i look like I haven’t slept in three days?” To be fair, to prepare for his scene, the actor didn’t sleep for three days to look suitably exhausted. Impressive, yes, but you know what’s more impressive? Acting.
• First look at Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy. Looks more like an actual burn victim. Impressive.
• This girl falls asleep at a funeral and is scared by Freddy-based images. Yeah, it’s scary, but you know what else is scary? Being very rude and sleeping at a friends funeral. Pfft, young people today, no respect, no manners.
• “Oh my god, a picture of me when I was young with this person, but I don’t remember knowing him until high school”. You were just standing somewhere in the vicinity of him, doesn’t exactly prove you were best buds, you could have been photobombing him.
• “open your books to page 84”, LOL, as if these people can read.
• Kris falls asleep in class and there’s a pretty cool visual where the colour of the scene changes and her classmates disappear. Very cool looking. That alone makes it better than Final Nightmare.
• Big scare for the character there is that her hair fell out. It might not mean Freddy is real, you might just have alopecia.
• “are you gonna let me in?” Yeah, because who wouldn’t let someone into their room who climbs up to their bedroom window?
• Next time she’s asleep she dreams of a school, lots of schoolchildren being all creepy and whatnot.
• Oh, she’s dead. She’s definitely going to die. She’s being thrown around the room (possible homage to the first film) then cuts appear in her chest and she falls back onto the bed. I like this, there was blood, but not too much. The trouble with a lot of horror films is they think “blood” equals “scary”, so the more blood the scarier the death, so a single cut automatically gushes blood, I prefer it when it seems to almost ooze out.
• Oh, Rooney Mara is Nancy. I dunno, I like Rooney, but she’s not quite in same league as Heather CougerMellacampaLampaKappaDappalIie (I can’t remember her actual second name)
• Guy appears in someone elses house, covered in blood, and seems surprised when he’s accused of murder.
• Random question: when a murderer comes in covered in blood, who pays to clean it? Is it the prison/taxpayer? Don’t let The Daily Mail find this out, they’ll have a fit.
• “Why are you screaming? I haven’t even cut you yet” That’s a damn good line.
• Random fact: Jackie Earle Haley was asked how he got into character for this film. His response: “sitting in a make-up chair for hours. After that you fell like you could kill someone”.
• Ok, so this guy just died.
• “Did you know that once the heart stops beating the brain can keep functioning for seven minutes? we’ve got six more minutes to play”. Holy hell that’s good writing. The idea that even dying doesn’t stop Freddy torturing you, you’re just left being made to fight an unwinnable fight with a time limit. Just the concept of that is truly terrifying.
• “I keep dreaming about children”, careful now
• Freddy just licked Nancy’s face, then holds her hand and says “you smell different”. Because that’s not disturbing.
• “he died in his sleep” yeah, of blood loss, that’s not normal.
• The guy from (I think) Jennifer’s Body dreams (during a swim lesson, totally safe) and see the death of Freddy. He’s being chased and hunted by angry parents as he shouts he didn’t do it. Now, Jackie Earle Haley seems to be playing it as an innocent person. What if he is?
• “what’s the right way? Our kids go on a stand and tell a room of people what happened?” Yeah, I mean, a fair trial, where’s the justice in that?
• What if he was innocent? Adds a completely different spin to the story. Freddy is no longer a perverted serial killer, he’s just really pissed off, and who can blame him. He’s angry at the parents for killing him, and he’s angry at the kids (who he’s now killing) for lying to their parents and causing his death. Means the line “you think you can turn back time? You think you can bring the dead back to life? I didn’t fucking think so” has a LOT more to it. It would also explain why keeps bringing them to the pre-school. He’s not taunting them, he’s trying to get them to face their own bullshits.
• “We were five, we would have said anything. The things we said he did, the cave, did you ever find it?” They didn’t. Now the film itself is raising the possibility itself. Oh, this is good. This is very very good. Please don’t fuck this up.
• Apparently Jackie Earle Haley would improvise a lot on set, just to make the other actors panic. That’s actually pretty brilliant and method. As long as he didn’t stab someone during filming, that would be weird.
• Random fact: Jackie Earle Haley stabbed someone during filming. Ok it was an accident and only a small one but still.
• Okay, I’ve just figured out this kid is called Quentin. Please Freddy, please kill him, to teach his parents a lesson about suitable childrens names.
• “what if I say no?” “why don’t you sleep in it?” Dude, in this type of context that’s super rapey
• Oh, it turns out the kids were telling the truth, Freddy was abusing them. Kind of disappointed, they had a chance to do something chilling then pulled out at the last moment. Probably to stop whiney fans bitching about the changes. Oh, and if you’re sitting there thinking “but fans of films won’t complain about stupid things that don’t effect the previous films, fans are smart”, then remake a franchise and make a character black, then wait for the online reaction from “fans”.
• Kind of a dull death for Quentin. Shame as had some cool set pieces which would have really suited a death. The swimming pool scene, for example, if you’re a writer and can’t think of a good-looking way to kill someone in that environment you should just give up now.
• Oh, Quentin didn’t die, just nearly died. He manages to stab Nancy with adrenaline, Pulp Fiction style to wake her up, she holds onto Freddy and drags him into the real world. I get the feeling this isn’t going to end with Nancy just shouting at Freddy.
• Holy crap that’s a great ending! Nancy goes home and is thought to be safe, but Freddy appears behind her mother in the mirror, sticks his claws through her mothers eyes then pulls her into the mirror, the mirror sealing up behind her. Amazing end to the film, brutal, and looked brilliant. But the best part of it? It cuts very quickly to the credits, and the song All I Have To Do Is Dream

So, that’s it. It’s over. All I have to say about this film is: f*ck you I liked it. Haley is a fantastic Freddy, like a yapping tenacious dog. The story makes sense, had good inventive set pieces etc. Of course I’m majorly disappointed that for a moment they briefly teased a much better film, but it’s still pretty impressive.