Halloween Marathon: A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

So far, A Nightmare on Elm Street series haven’t been that bad.  Honestly, at this point in the other series, it was getting a little sketchy for the past two years highlights.  This one only has one a little more iffy one in the second one.  A lot of you have been warning me that its going to go downhill after the first.  I’m starting to wonder if this one seems to be working a little too much for than normal.  However, its not a bad thing. Moving on, we’re on the 5th installment and this one is called Dream Child.  Are they pulling this Dream Warriors, Dream Master and now Dream Child thing a little too far? We’ll see, right?

Let’s go!

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Cast: Lisa Wilcox, Robert Englund, Danny Hassel, Kelly Jo Minter, Erika Anderson, Joe Seely, Nicholas Mele

Alice and Dan has started dating after the last installment.  They have been Freddy Krueger free.  Now, its high school graduation except she starts to realize that she’s falling into dream sequences while she’s awake in a way.  She soon realizes that her friends are being picked off while she is fully awake as well and it makes her wonder how its being done until she learns that she’s pregnant.  It turns out that Freddy is attacking through her unborn son and the only one that can stop him is the spirit of Freddy’s mother, Amanda which she and her friends need to find a way to free before its too late.

How to write about Nightmare 5: The Dream Child? Let’s start with some good stuff.

First of all, I appreciate that this one continues to build on the previous story.  On top of that, they managed to still have Lisa Wilcox play Alice and Danny Hassel play Dan.  Its great to have familiar faces.  This time, they have built some new friendships.  One of them is a girl whose mom wants her to become a model called Greta, an aspiring comic book illustrator (or writer?) Mark and a smart girl called Yvonne. The last installment had start this rather predictable turn of events of just the order of how the characters are killed off.  One thing that is intriguing is how Freddy wants to kill in the real world now.  Its not about the Dream Warriors and revenging the ones who killed him.  However, I also like the decision to build on the fact that now we know about his background and how he was conceived and they choose to expand that storyline into his mom, Amanda.

Another a good thing is that they use a really creepy kid that we soon learn is the Dream Child which is weirdly the grown up version of her unborn baby.  I always think having kids in movies always add some creepy factors in here.  Although this boy isn’t around a lot, the moments he shows up does add some mystery.  Plus, he is a naive character and seemingly influenced by Freddy Krueger. The only thing is that it feels like he wasn’t built on much.

We are slowing inching into the bad of Nightmare 5.  My main criticism are in the kills.  Freddy is now brutal.  Even more than he was taking revenge before.  It seems a little weird to me this choice but in this one, the kills are graphic and truly very disgusting.  I can get that it helps increase the insanity of the character of Freddy.  I just found it was such a huge leap from the previous installments.  Let’s step back to the first one where I thought Johnny Depp’s kill was very gory but it was still just blood and campy and a glorious kill in itself.  But for this one, there was one kill that I found really creative and honestly the effects weren’t bad and its the one up there. For those who have seen this, for two of the characters, it was downright dragged out and explicit and just so unnecessary to be hitting that territory.

For that, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child was destroyed.  Its sad that one aspect was strong enough for me to go from mildly enjoying it to feeling weirded out and then downright disgusted literally by the movie. I’m not one to be squeamish about slasher flicks and blood and most of the time, gore that even bother me too much but I just feel the way some kill choices went down really made me question where this franchise is going and how they are changing who Freddy is.  I can understand that now that the main deed is done and they still found a way to continue the main story (which is a good decision), that they had to find a way to change it but this was not the way I liked it.

Overall, Dream Child is a below average installment.  It wasn’t the snoozefest that Freddy’s Revenge (Part 2) was but while I can appreciate the efforts, I’m starting to feel that the different directors are finally hitting some bumpy roads as the style starts changing. I just don’t even have enough confidence that there’s a good direction to move on after this one.

Have you seen The Dream Child/Part 5? What are your thoughts?

Halloween Marathon: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master (1988)

Moving right along in Part 4 of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, we have Dream Master.  The last part really renewed my hopes with where this series could be heading.  Funny part in all this is that every movie so far is helmed by a different director and it makes me wonder the different direction and view each has had for it.  This one is no different of course, so the adventures are yet unknown as well. Still, I remain a lot more optimistic and a little excited!

Let’s check it out! 🙂

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master (1988)

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, Andras Jones, Rodney Eastman, Ken Sagoes, Brooke Theiss

Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman who may know the way to defeat him for good.-IMDB

 Yet another director taking over this series and I have to say that I’m liking how its having this continuity factor added in.  It makes Freddy into a villain that differentiates from Jason or Michael because we now know that he has a goal.  His mission to revenge continues in this one a few years after the previous movie and he is out after being revived to kill the remaining Dream Warriors. I have to say that Renny Harlin is  a pretty good director.  At least, my expectations raised when I did a little research and realized that he helmed one of my personal favorite creature features, Deep Blue Sea.  That movie is just all sorts of fun and this one follows quite the same feeling actually.  However, this one does get a little repetitive and in turn made it feel slightly lengthy by the end.

One of the main things with this one is that, we start it with the last 3 remaining Dream Warriors.  They are in high school and trying their best to move on with their lives.  At least, the two guys, Joey and Kincaide are but Kristen, now sadly not Patricia Arquette anymore but taken over by a girl called Tuesday Knight, constantly pull them back into the dream sequence with Freddy and suspects that they aren’t done with him.  I guess when you think about Freddy too much, he finds a way to come back.  Except this time, Kristen’s own abilities aren’t enough for Freddy except her boyfriend’s sister, Alice seems to have her own little way to master her dreams.  The fun part is that he now twists it around and somewhat uses Alice to get his new victims.  Only deal is, Tuesday Knight’s Karen is a really not so great.  She could definitely scream but that acting was pretty meh. While Alice (played by Lisa Wilcox) may be a decent actress and had an intriguing character arch but I’m still deciding whether it was peculiar in a good or bad way.

There are some pretty fun tropes used to move the story at the end.  It creates a bit of good confusion because it adds a quirky spin to the events until the characters themselves pull out and figure out what they have become.  At the same time, part of what makes Freddy’s character a fun slasher is the way he murders his victims.  He’s always been able to get into their illusions and imagination via their dreams and take control of their dream sequence.  This time, he takes it to a new level that made me quite impressed.  The only issue is that the kills were so frequent that he felt like in one movie, he was trying to catch up to his kill count that the other slasher series would’ve amounted to at this point in their series.  It was frequent and turned a little meaningless and while the movie isn’t a lot longer than its predecessors, it started feeling a little boring and used.

Overall, this fourth installment of A Nightmare of Elm Street called Dream Master takes it up a level by continuing where the previous one left off and adding upon it.  It also gives Freddy a more vengeful and resilient to death side.  His kill count increases and it does have some unique fun tropes that are added here. While it loses steam somewhere near the end, it is still a fairly enjoyable addition to the series.

Have you seen Part 4 of A Nightmare on Elm Street/Dream Master? What do you think?