Like I mentioned before, Freddy’s Dead is very love-it or hate-it, with the scales mostly tipping toward hate-it. Why do I like this movie then, you ask? It’s that tangible desperation to re-invent a franchise that’s long past jumping the shark, still trying to take it to strange new places. I don’t even care if those places are in the realm of good taste. Like, oh I don’t know, say there's a scene where a character dreams about getting sucked into a TV set, and ends up in a video game controlled by Freddy Krueger who, just shy from winking at the camera, goes: “Great graphics!”. You bet your sweet bippy we’re far from home, Dorothy.

Look, I just don’t buy into sacred cows. Change it up, shed what’s expected of you, mess with canon just to spite that shitty producer who told you you can’t be too girly or sensitive. When your central theme is “dreams," it’s not the sky that’s the limit but your imagination. I’m not saying Freddy’s Dead is the poster child for creativity, but it definitely didn’t shy away from making mistakes. It embraced Freddy Krueger’s ascendence to a pop culture icon in the worst of ways, thus the best of ways. Just like Gremlins 2, it is not just in many ways a live-action cartoon but also a stab at deconstructing sequelitis. When Freddy's Dead came out in 1991, we were still a long ways off from the type of meta-horror Wes Craven would re-invent himself with in the Scream series, or even New Nightmare. So it’s intriguing how a little desperation enabled an eleventh-hour sequel to delve into slasher tropes and ask “What would happen if we propelled this concept of teenagers getting wiped out?” It’s not necessarily a thought that’s allowed a lot of weight within the movie, but someone did leave it out in the bushes somewhere for you to ponder over and I am all about that.

Freddy’s Dead is nothing if not an anomaly in a franchise that became too big for its britches. At the same time it’s both a deviation from, and constrained by its formula. But I love it because it’s a fascinatingly desperate attempt to re-capture some of the magic that kickstarted Freddy Mania. Of the big two horror juggernauts in the '80s, I’ve always found myself more enamoured by the Friday the 13th series due to their raw simplicity. Yet, the more I come back to Elm Street, the more I appreciate how it is by design a playground for imaginative little set pieces and an anything-goes mentality.