8 Films With "Subtle" Messages (That Are REALLY Obvious)

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

It's difficult to believe that there was a time when people didn't 'get' Freddy's Revenge. This first sequel, often considered the ugly duckling of the series, is based around a young man struggling with his sexuality.

Freddy is 'inside' of Jesse, and he emerges when Jesse is in situations of potential intimacy with other men, such as when he's in his friend's bedroom, for instance, or when he's in the showers with his gym teacher who happens to be into S&M.

As well as a film about coming out, Freddy's Revenge can be seen as an AIDS film, because of the way that the film interweaves the possibility that Jesse might be gay with the possibility that he might be a killer.

Freddy's Revenge came out in 1985, one of the years which saw homophobia ramp up to new heights due to the scaremongering that surrounded the AIDS epidemic at that time. Gay sexuality was already taboo, so an unexplained "new disease" that seemed to be associated with drug use and homosexuality made it even more so.

On this reading, the film is undeniably homophobic. But the way the film engages so deeply with the fear of coming out, paradoxically, is one of the reasons it is now finding new fans.