Harefooted Halloween: A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

What I Liked: Still plenty of special effects work to marvel at.  The weird baby Freddy turning into adult form and then back again towards the end are probably the two most successful.  And the oversized demonic baby cart prop looks really rad and appropriately evil.

What I Didn’t Like: In the previous installment it’s established that Freddy can’t just attack any old person in their dream, he needs Alice (Lisa Wilcox (Knots Landing)) as a bridge to bring others into her dreams in order to kill them.  It’s a convoluted idea that the filmmakers insisted on sticking with for part 5.  They should’ve abandoned this and simply opened up everyone else’s dreams to Krueger once he finished dispatching the Elm Street kids.  So now the filmmakers painted themselves into a corner and came up with a messy plot about Freddy using Alice’s unborn baby’s dreams as a conduit to murder folks.  On top of this Alice experiences nightmare visions when she’s awake which makes things even more confusing.  I need to give up trying to figure out the rules in these movies because they only get more frustrating.

They tamed this sucker down too much.  There’s little blood and a paltry body count of 3.  Not only that but the one time Krueger uses his knife hand to kill he slashes a paper copy of his victim which looks unbelievably lame.

There’s a lot of stop motion use which dates the film a bit more than it should.

Overall Impressions: Unfortunately this is a movie nobody wanted to make but part 4 was the highest grossing episode yet so they couldn’t stop.  Sometimes it works out regardless of the circumstances like Pusher 2 and 3, but other times it’s a disaster.  Now I wouldn’t say Dream Child is as bad as all that but there’s not a whole lot to sink your teeth into.  The story about Freddy grooming Alice’s child in the womb isn’t a terribly fun idea.  Although you can read a lot into Freddy representing the fear and apprehension that a young single unemployed mother is going through.  Will my baby be healthy?  How will I support us?  Will my friends and family understand?

Ok fine, you don’t really go see a Nightmare for its nuanced plot.  So then what about the effects?  Yea, they’re good and show a lot of creativity.  Greta (Erika Anderson (Zandalee from Zandalee)) being force fed to death is the definite standout.  That’s genuinely disturbing.  The trouble is part 4 delivered such an insane extravaganza that it was gonna be extremely difficult for anyone to top and part 5’s effects execution just isn’t as well done.

After a consistent ratcheting up of nightmare sequences and gore they took a step back here.  Director Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2, Judgment Night) admits there wasn’t anywhere for the series to go except to tone it down slightly.  I’m not automatically opposed to that because I believe a highly inventive story angle can win the day over reduced carnage.  That didn’t happen here though.  It’s just…I dunno, sorta dorky.  Worst one so far.