#anoes3

the good parts first: speaking of what i was saying that post a while back, this is probably one of the best horror films set in a psychiatric hospital where all of the patients are completely sympathetic characters, none of them are portrayed as evil or dangerous, and the threat to them is a combination of realistic and mundane abuses of their autonomy by the staff and an outside danger taking advantage of their vulnerable position. all the kids in this movie are so charming and likable even with their limited characterization and you really feel their solidarity and bonds which is why it's especially heartbreaking when some of them don't make it. the introduction of lucid dreaming and shared dreams is cool with how they figure out how to use it to their advantage. i like how our introduction to kristen is basically the same as tina from the first movie - being tormented by dreams while her mom dismisses her to spend the night with her current boyfriend - but she's actually our final girl this time and survives with a solid support system. nancy and kristen's relationship as the two final girls working together could have been a strong center of the movie but...

okay a lot of my issues stem from this film trying to make dr. gordon (not that one) the new main character and as such i developed an irrational resentment of him. we could have had nancy back as the main hero of the film but we don't. why, so this guy who we've never heard of and will never appear in the series again can have a "skeptic coming around to believe" character arc? he's useful insofar as we need an ally on the hospital side of things to help us out but again he really does not do anything in this film that nancy or don thompson couldn't have done. since we did get john saxon back i actually would have liked a subplot of nancy confronting him and convincing him to get himself out of his alcoholic funk to help out by going on a sidequest to properly bury krueger's remains. even if he dies in the process. but we gotta have neil along for the ride too.

(and nancy dying at the end just feels so...abrupt? first they believe that it's over and they've defeated freddy WAY too fast, then she falls for a brief illusion of her dad showing back up when we already know that's how he gets you, and then all of a sudden she's dying in kristen's arms and neil is getting distracted from her funeral by ghost nun visions yet again before he gets to be the one we end on. sleeping peacefully after inheriting the model of her house and her malaysian dream spirit doll. fuck OFF. okay i'm calming down now)

in my dream (ha) rewrite of this i don't know if i'd cut the whole ghost nun/freddy's mom visions thing or also give it to nancy or what, because it is a little much, especially with the backstory reveal. it's the one time in this film we do have a "scary violent dangerous Criminally Insane Ward" element to the psych hospital setting, but it's also never seen and acknowledged to be long since closed. i will say the story sounds an awful lot like the kind of thing that whatever the real facts were have been exaggerated into over time in-universe, and i kind of wish the later sequels didn't double down on it being 100% true, but that's another post

another... absolute bastard man