Nightmare on Elm Street 7 Film Collection 4K UHD Review: The 4K Franchise 8:48 PM (last hour)
After last year’s 4K UHD release of the original Nightmare on Elm Street, they finally released the whole Freddy series in September. It took me until now to watch all six sequels but you still have time before Halloween! Freddy vs. Jason was not included. So, we already covered the original last year. Let’s look at the sequels.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge has certainly improved over time, thanks to the LGBTQ+ themes. It’s also sort of the only standalone sequel. It makes sense that another family moves into the Thompson house and it happens again. It has Nancy’s diary but none of the characters are connected the way they are in future sequels.
It looks great with bright sunny ‘80s high school and suburbia during the day. Boy, the house surrounded by deep shadow at night is ominous. And the side trellis where Jesse (Mark Patton) sees Freddy (Robert Englund) in the boiler room. On the bus, shadows obscure Freddy nicely. The pool party massacre is pretty bright, but it is late night above.
There are some surround effects with the runaway bus and balls bouncing around the locker room.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors set the template for Nightmare sequels. It let Freddy have bigger and bigger set pieces, defined by the victims’ greatest fears. It also brought back the Elm Street children and Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), and introduced the backstory of Freddy’s conception.
The institutional setting offers a lot of shadow opportunities like the isolation room and under the archways on campus. Amanda Krueger disappears into them. The junkyard finale is part of the real world, but the corners of the dream world like the Wizard scene and the stairway down to Hell are stark. Kristen (Patricia Arquette) papier maches against a pure black room.
The wall crumbles in full surround when the Freddy snake appears. Birds flutter when Neil (Craig Wasson) follows Amanda to the abandoned ward. The fire in dream Hell crackles.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is my favorite, not just because it was the first I saw in the theater when I got brave enough to watch these movies and read Fangoria. It’s Alice (Lisa Wilcox), discovering her power. She never even looked at herself in the mirror. She covered it with pictures of her friends.
So when she’s absorbed all the dream powers, she takes down all the photos and sees herself ready to battle Freddy, I still get chills. I didn’t know the term yet, but I was a young feminist for a girl discovering her power.
Dream Master has some of the best nightmares and the decrepit Freddy house in the dark thunderstorm looks great. Opening the cold boiler and Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) in the junkyard truck keep the darkness while other dreams get more flamboyant. There are some green headlights in the junkyard I never noticed before, but also some pixelation when Kristen (Tuesday Knight) knocks herself out in class, but that’s not a vital image.
Surround sound gets much fuller now with thunder and rain, more background screams, chains clanking, the ceiling dripping, even birds chirping in daytime. The canine resurrection flame fills the room. Kincaid’s scream echoes. The beach, the elevator ride, the windy movie theater are all as aural as they are visual.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child doesn’t really work but there are enough interesting ideas to go with it, and it continues Alice’s story. Freddy haunting the dreams of an unborn child makes sense, and it’s nice to see Alice’s dad (Nicholas Mele) sober. The most interesting idea is that the one person Freddy fears is his own mommy.
It’s not my favorite looking entry either but 4K captures it. The grimy asylum walls are full of deep shadow. Stained glass windows are really distinct in the grimy church. Alice running through the tower crosses a lot of shadow. Yvonne (Kelly Jo Minter)’s high dive is through a pure void. Dan (Danny Hassel)’s last drive goes through pitch black night. The black and white sequence is cool with the color victim but it remains mostly gray.
Surround sound captures the driving, the flames crackling, comic book pages fluttering and sparks when Alice meets her fetus.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is silly but it’s fun and still has some genuine kills. Mocking deaf Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) is pure Freddy, and the infinite map is nicely surreal. It benefits the most from not actually being the last. Now it’s just Nightmare 6, the height of Freddy’s pop culture zeitgeist.
It is a very shadowy movie and the 4K makes it look more stylish than ever before. There are good shadows in the youth center, the abandoned Springwood streets at night, the boiler room and more. A lot of the movie has Freddy against a pure balck sky.
It is cool they include 3D glasses in every edition of Freddy’s Dead. Just know that it never worked, not even in theaters. I recently saw it at the New Beverly so can confirm that’s not just my 34-year-old memory. But, I have to say 4K is the most 3D it’s every looked. Short of using modern technology to post-convert the film, this is the closest they’ve ever gotten. The red and blue makes big splotches and it still blurs and goes double, but you can see what they were going for in most of the scenes.
Surround also creates aural 3D effects of thunder, Jon Doe (Shon Greenblatt) rolling down the hill, the pins dropping in poor Carlos’s nightmare, and electricity in the finale.
When I heard Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was going to be about Freddy stalking the actors from the films, I was excited to see Freddy kill Englund. So I was disappointed when that didn’t happen but Craven was interested in something deeper than gimmicks. Scream would deliver more on the populist kind of meta.
Here, Craven was exploring how our fear manifests when we don’t give it an outlet. That’s the new Freddy. It’s also about Heather Langenkamp being legitimately stalked and authorities blame her movies instead of the stalker, unfortunately still relevant. And she’s grieving her husband. And she’s mother worried about her son (Mikko Hughes) also being dismissed.
Those are also the people Craven had to deal with his whole career, blaming horror movies instead of the real institutions that create real-world horror. This Freddy is coming for Heather’s son, the worst fear of any parent and the reverse of the other films. In those, the kids couldn’t trust their parents so had to band together.
Also, maybe an actor is tired of hearing about one movie all the time, although Langenkamp has continued supporting and exploring Nightmare.
As a mostly real-world based movie, New Nightmare in 4K vividly captures a realistic house, playground, hospital and studio offices. There is moody lighting in Langenkamp’s home at night, and the freeway scene captures the darkest night.
Surround sound is more subtle. I only caught glass breaking in earthquake scenes, and ominous whispers at the funeral.
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DC STUDIOS: AARON PIERRE SAYS ‘LANTERNS’ HAS WRAPPED 2:55 PM (7 hours ago)
Aaron Pierre recently revealed to ESQUIRE that filming on HBO’s new superhero series LANTERNS, has wrapped.
“It was an enormous shoot. It was of a grand scale in every sense of the word,” Pierre said. “It’s been a long time coming for many fans and supporters. And I truly hope with all my heart that we make everybody proud and we make everybody thrilled that we did this, because we’re thrilled and we’re proud.”
In Lanterns, Pierre plays John Stewart, a recruit in the Green Lantern Corps. Stewart is assigned to work and train under veteran Hal Jordan, Kyle Chandler. And together the duo investigates a murder in Nebraska that reveals darker secrets at play.
“One of the things that I love the most about the Green Lantern Corps is that, yes, they are heroes. Yes, they are celebrated and championed as such, but they embrace their flaws in a way that is beautiful. That makes them extremely relatable,” Pierre said. “We would often have this conversation on set. I feel like, knowing what I know and what we’ve done with this season, even if I wasn’t part of it, I would watch it and say, ‘I know those guys. In real life, I know those guys.”
Pierre added, “When you watch it, it almost makes you go, ‘You know what? If I can just figure out where to get my application, I could be in the Green Lantern Corps. The training would be intense, and the responsibility would be enormous, but I might be able to just apply for this and have a go.’ There’s just a relatability to it that is beautiful. Hopefully that resonates with everybody.”
LANTERNS should drop in 2026. But no actual date has been given.
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“PREDATOR BADLANDS”- THE INTERNATIONAL TRAILER 1:37 PM (8 hours ago)
Set in the future, on a deadly remote planet, “Predator: Badlands” follows a young Predator outcast (played by newcomer Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who finds an unlikely ally in Thia (Emmy and Golden Globe nominee Elle Fanning) as he embarks on a treacherous journey in search of the ultimate adversary.
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“WICKED FOR GOOD” CLIP: A ‘WONDERFUL’ SONG REVEAL 7:14 AM (14 hours ago)
If you haven’t seen the Broadway play, you might want to avoid this confusing spoiler. And if you have seen the play, you know exactly what’s going on here…
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NETFLIX: “ONE PIECE” – SEASON 2 GETS GINORMOUS NEW POSTER 6:50 AM (15 hours ago)
Netflix has revealed a new poster for One Piece Season 2. It offers a look at the live-action “Little Garden” arc. The image shows two giant horned warriors with long beards and Viking-style helmets. They stand in a lush, prehistoric landscape filled with ancient ruins and dinosaurs.
I loved season one, and I can’t wait to see the new adventures in 2026…
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SPRINGSTEEN BIO PIC ROCKS THEATERS THIS FRIDAY 21 Oct 1:11 PM (yesterday, 1:11 pm)
On the cusp of global superstardom, New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen struggles to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past as he records the album “Nebraska” in the early 1980s.
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NETFLIX TRAILER: “TROLL 2” STOMPS NORWAY DEC. 1st 21 Oct 12:44 PM (yesterday, 12:44 pm)
A new troll has awakened! Join Nora, Andreas, and Captain Kris as they embark on their most dangerous adventure yet. With the clock ticking and chaos spreading, they’ll need new allies and ancient secrets to stop the rampage. Can they save Norway before it’s too late? Watch Troll 2, Dec 1 on Netflix.
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Nobody 2 4K UHD Review: Oden4kirk 18 Oct 7:40 PM (4 days ago)
Nobody made Bob Odenkirk an action hero. Nobody 2 gives him a lot more fights to show all he’s learned. The plot is simple. He takes his family on vacation, but people pick on his kids so he fights back. Suddenly he’s embroiled in the town’s underground criminal element and has to take them down too. It’s standard stuff but sets up the clever fights.
In 4K UHD Noboddy 2 looks a smidge better than the standard modern movie. It looks like a summer tourist trap town with bright colors. There is some pixelation in the river when viewed from overhead drone shot.
But it gives them good fight locations. There are fights in a neon green garage, a flashy boardwalk arcade, a good old bad guy warehouse and the finale in a water park at night. Nobody 2 is a colorful film with dynamic lighting.
Bullets surround the room from midway game rifles to heavy artillery. Water splashes during the boat fight. A distant horn honks from an off screen car. Explosions fill the room in the finale and there are some fun sound reveals in the water park sequence too.
Deleted scenes include more of the Wild Bill commercial for the vacation town, two scenes of the son Brady’s girlfriend and some basic vacation exposition. Bonus features explore the making of a sequel in a little over 10 minutes each. The best part is a side by side comparison of previsualized fight choreography and the final scene.
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Samurai Fury 4K UHD Review: The Samurai Kid 18 Oct 7:37 PM (4 days ago)
I am not as well versed in samurai cinema as I am in martial arts, but I can still appreciate a good action epic. Samurai Fury hits many universal beats within the genre and culture.
The ronin Hyoe (Yo Oizumi) and a master (Akira Emoto) train the kid Saizo (Kento Nagao) after Hyoe saves him from Honekawa (Shinichi Tsutsumi). Hyoe has a few more fights along the way too.
That training can be more intense than the 36 chambers of Shaolin. The ground is covered in shards of pottery while blades hang on streamers and blow in the wind. When Saizo learns how to dodge those blades without stepping on the shards, yeah, he’s ready.
Then they organize all the ronin to oppose unfair taxes for a climactic battle which spans a night battle into the next day. Saizo fights off other samurai on the rooftops.
Well Go USA has released Samurai Fury in 4K UHD so it can be experienced in the most epic presentation. That also puts it in a class with the classic Kurasawa black and white Samurai movies in the Criterion Collection. Images like the fog clouds caressing the frame and pink leaves on trees transport you to the past on the other side of the world. The midnight raid ensues in the deep night.
The Dolby surround sound is constant too. Wind blows, distant chirping in the woods, fire crackles, rain pours and paper flutters around. You’ll even hear gang members laugh and civilians gasp all around you.
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“WICKED FOR GOOD” PROMOS: ELPHABA’S & GLINDA’S PLACES IN OZ 17 Oct 2:07 PM (5 days ago)
Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), now demonized as The Wicked Witch of the West, lives in exile, hidden within the Ozian forest while continuing her fight for the freedom of Oz’s silenced Animals and desperately trying to expose the truth she knows about The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).
Glinda, meanwhile, has become the glamorous symbol of Goodness for all of Oz, living at the palace in Emerald City and reveling in the perks of fame and popularity. Under the instruction of Madame Morrible (Oscar® winner Michelle Yeoh), Glinda is deployed to serve as an effervescent comfort to Oz, reassuring the masses that all is well under the rule of The Wizard.
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