Second Take Cinema

A decade in the making, 2003's Freddy vs Jason saw the two slasher icons going at it and represented the end of an era; the final time Robert Englund would play Freddy Krueger on the big screen.

The lovely folks at Enigma Releasing kindly offered us the chance to do an early review of their new movie The Last Front. Already available in the United States, The Last Front releases in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on November 1st. Starring Iain Glenn (Game of Thrones) this World War I period drama tells the story of a small Belgian village that is set upon by a passing group of Germans who accuse the village residents of harbouring an anti-German resistance gang.

Often cited as a dry-run for Scream two years later, franchise creator Wes Craven returns to his most infamous creation to deliver a new tale which makes use of meta-narrative and self-referential winks to the audience. Does this first attempt at a meta horror movie from Craven hold up 30 years later?

So this is how it ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. Freddy left the 80s and entered the 90s with a particularly weak entry in the franchise in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. That's not to say there isn't anything interesting to be found here; brightly lit, very colourful and with jokes lifted right out of Looney Tunes, this film more than any other displays the ways in which Freddy had become watered down and commercialised for the mainstream audience.

Thus begins what many would consider the downslope of the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise with 1989's part 5: The Dream Child. Returning from the previous movie, Alice (Lisa Wilcox) begins experiencing strange Freddy Krueger-tinged dreams whilst she is awake. Around the same time she discovers that she is pregnant. Could the two things be related?

The Dream Master is the highest grossing film in the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise (excluding crossover movie Freddy vs Jason) which is a remarkable achievement considering how fraught with problems the movie's production was. A Nightmare On Elm Street's 4th entry is a film that, by rights, really shouldn't work; its elements are too disparate, it began shooting without a script, the producer and director who consistently at loggerheads and it had a turnaround time of less than a year after the third one...and yet, somehow, A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 has that "X Factor" that makes it feel much more entertaining and cohesive than it has any right to be. At least, that's Jamie's take on this film, but will Rory agree?