The tyranist's thoughts
Looking back from over ten years in the future, it is difficult to remember or understand the phenomena that was Freddie Krueger in the 80's. That makes watching some of the entries in this series now a sort baffling exploration of fanaticism that has lost all of it's lustre. They made these movies to make fans happy. Fans loved Freddie and in a lot of ways he was the hero of these movies. But you couldn't really make him the hero (just like Jason couldn't be the hero) or a lot of parents would start making a lot of noise. Perhaps the only long horror series villain that managed to stay firmly on the side of evil was Michael Myers. By the fourth entry of the series Freddie's witticisms are tired and even pretty boring.
So the Dream Warriors from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 are back (even though I look more like Patricia Arquette than Tuesday Knight does) and life is good. Until Kincaid's dog pisses Freddie out of the grave that is. So he's alive again and wants vengeance on the last of the original Elm Street kids. In under half and hour he accomplishes what he couldn't in an hour and a half of the last episode. As she's dying, Kristen passes her powers onto the next generation in the form of highly virginal Alice. Unfortunately, the powers end up drawing kids in for Freddie instead of protecting them. After a bunch of death, Alice is ready to take Freddie on and the showdown begins.
Is there any part of that you didn't expect?
I actually thought that the fundamental story wasn't as terrible as the movie ended up. Not that it is truly abominable, just that there were distinct moments when I wanted to fast forward it to get to something interesting. Freddie is pretty cliched by this time and the movie just doesn't really support it's own weight.
This might be fun to watch in a marathon situation, just for reference, but I would say there is no reason you really need to watch anything but the original.