Watching ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’ again this Halloween, I was struck by how much it struggles to recreate what made the original so distinctive. The first film had a real psychological menace – that disorienting dream logic where we were never entirely sure what realm we were in. This sequel constantly repeats the same device: a disturbing scene, Jesse (Mark Patton) wakes up screaming… and then we rinse and repeat. It becomes formulaic rather than frightening.

Instead of deepening the mystery of dream vs. reality, the sequel often literalizes everything. The original had the terror of people being killed inside their dreams. Here those ideas feel more straightforward and far less uncanny – so the enigma dissolves.

What is fascinating, and what has since made this film something of a cult text, is its pronounced gay subtext. Jesse wanders into an S&M leather bar, finds his school sports teacher there, and the next thing we’re in the school gym where the coach is strung up and whipped with towels across his naked body. There’s also Jesse’s intense emotional connection with his best male friend, contrasted with a girlfriend, Lisa (Kim Myers, who looks uncannily like Meryl Streep). The implication seems clear: Jesse is repressing desires he can’t articulate, and the ‘possession’ by Freddy plays almost as metaphor. Ultimately, his girlfriend’s declaration of love ‘saves’ him, reinforcing the need to perform heterosexuality to be freed.

Ironically, it might have been a more interesting film if it actually leaned harder into that psychological and identity crisis drama rather than sticking to generic slasher beats. For, while the first film was visionary, slippery and dream-haunted, this feels flatter, more mechanical, and nowhere near the sum of its parts.