paulclaassen The official final chapter in the series and I officially did not enjoy it one bit. The effects and make-up are reminiscent of a B-movie. More of a spoof than to be taken seriously. Extremely disappointing.

TheLittleSongbird The original 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is still to me one of the scariest and best horror films there is, as well as a truly great film in its own right and introduced us to one of the genre's most iconic villains in Freddy Krueger. It is always difficult to do a sequel that lives up to a film as good as 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' let alone one to be on the same level.As far as 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' sequels go, there are good ones such as 'The Dream Master' (number 4) and especially 'Dream Warriors' (number 3) but also disappointing ones with 'The Dream Child (number 5) and this 'The Final Nightmare' (the second film 'Freddy's Revenge' was also underwhelming but not as much as 5 and 6). Very little to recommend, with the only good things being Robert Englund doing his conscientious and freaky best and the haunting music.While a little better-looking than the fifth film, being not as crude and self-indulgent, the suitably nightmarish at times production design is wasted by the film looking drab and dreary and it can look sloppy. The 3D looks cheap and was truly pointless. Like the previous film, erratically paced (both rushed and tedious), ridiculous and non-atmospheric story with scares that are unimaginatively derivative, too far and between and vapidly tame on the whole. It lacks any kind of originality and is all very ho-hum.Englund aside, the acting is both bland and annoying. The cameos from Rosanne Barr, Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper were just as unnecessary as the 3D and are neither interesting or funny. Like the fifth film though, the cast have to work with an awkwardly clunky script and irritating characters that are written childishly and make decisions that frustrate. Even the humour doesn't work, Freddy's one-liners are more stale and toe-curlingly groan-worthy than twisted or witty and what was darkly comic before is replaced by an overload of cheese. The direction is largely unimaginative, while there is far too much of an over-reliance on gimmicks (none fresh or clever) and the ending is one of the lamest and most tacked on there is in horror.Overall, an incredibly tired entry and suggestive that the series is dead. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Ilikehorrormovies I'm fan of A Nightmare on Elm Street but this is the worst out of the series. The film could of done better if they hire the right people and it'll be a decent last film. I would change things to make it more better and I'll fix the story. The movie is so bad that they made another sequel to make it up. They almost had it but it fail.

ThiefOfStars I put off writing this review for a long time as it is arguably the worst entry into the series (except for maybe Freddy vs. Jason and the atrocious remake - but more on that later) and by far my least favourite, as everybody's favourite dream killer hacks his way through yet another batch of sleep deprived teenagers to get to his daughter, a social worker for said teenagers, in order to make his way out of Springwood (whose population of children he has successfully slaughtered) and into the consciousness of a new town to terrorise.Yes, they waited until the 'final' instalment of the franchise to reveal that before (or whilst) he became a serial child killer, Freddy was a family man with a wife and child; a set-up which simply falls flat, firstly because it was always heavily implied that Freddy had been forced to lurk in boiler rooms due to his social outcast role in the community - so this revelation just comes out of nowhere - and secondly, because although I feel the series had already become somewhat lacklustre before this movie, the characters in Freddy's Dead are so unbelievably dull, which equates to a very anti-climactic 'send-off' for this horror icon.I can't help but feel that the movie would've packed more of a punch if they'd found a way to bring back characters from previous movies in the series to defeat Freddy for a 'final' time.I've always been fairly generous when judging the Elm Street series as even after the movies themselves stopped being 'scary' I've always given props to the creativity of the visuals and ideas (i.e. the idea of the teenagers having dream powers and abilities suited to their personalities), but all of that is just gone in this movie; none of the characters have any interesting traits, powers or abilities and after having watched Freddy's Dead again recently, for the purpose of writing this review, I did enjoy the sequences where the John Doe character keeps finding himself in situations where he is falling through the sky but this is completely overridden by the cringe worthy video game/power glove sequence.Oh, and the movie attempts to explain the origins of Freddy's powers which is not only incredibly lame but unnecessary.(You've probably noticed that I've written the word 'final' in quotation marks; that's because I like to think Freddy's REAL send-off came out just three short years after this movie's release...)