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


The last we saw of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) was Alice (Lisa Wilcox) sending him back to hell.  A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was heavy on effects and light on plot, bringing Krueger back by having a hellhound urinate fire on his grave and then having the souls of his victims take revenge from the inside out.  Many of the sequences looked like music videos, which director Renny Harlin was mainly known for up to that point.  It also no longer was attempting to scare audiences, leaning into the humor from Dream Warriors and giving Freddy more and more one-liners. 

To me A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child was always the last consequential movie in the original trilogy, as it felt like Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare was barely a film and Wes Craven's New Nightmare was something unique to itself.  It also felt like a return to form, where there was a conscious effort to try to balance Freddy's quirks with a more frightening story once again and to remind everyone that he is, in fact, the villain.  For many it didn't work, but there are a minority of us that still find it enjoyable, even if it really is one movie too far. 

Alice has the perfect boyfriend in star quarterback Dan (Danny Hassel) and, as her and her friends graduate high school, they are all looking forward to getting on in their lives.  Problem is Alice has started having nightmares again, this time involving Amanda Krueger (Beatrice Boepple), the nun that was raped by a thousand maniacs and birthed Freddy.  Freddy, of course, is back as well, and this time Alice is not in control of her dreams, which she is also experiencing while awake. 

Despite everything that has happened Dan has a hard time believing her, as do her friends Greta (Erika Anderson), Mark (Joe Seely) and Yvonne (Kelly Jo Minter).  That is, until they start dying, with the survivors having glimpsed Freddy.  It turns out that the reason Alice is seeing him again is because she is pregnant and, as her child dreams, she experiences its nightmares.  Freddy, of course, has plans for the child, and Amanda is the key to stopping him this time around.

The main problem with this fifth entry is that it was rushed even more than the fourth film.  Director Stephen Hopkins was given four weeks to film and four weeks to edit, being handed the movie in February 1989 for a release later in the year.  That's fine for a cheap film, but New Line once again increased the budget for this one.  Where the corners were cut are easy to see, as the story doesn't seem fleshed out and the characters are barely formed.  There are some ideas in the film that would have been better if given some time and, in fact, many of them were supposed to be in the first sequel before it went into a different direction. 

That said, Lisa Wilcox is okay and Robert Englund is still doing what he does, although he doesn't seem as game this time around.  He also isn't given much to do other than be a rote bad guy.  Where the movie works is during the dream sequences, with Dan melding with a motorcycle version of Freddy being the best, as well as a fetus Freddy Alice sees in her dreams.  

I still enjoy this movie and think that this is a decent entry in the series, but I do see more of the flaws this time around.  A big problem is that The Dream Child is more of the same and the plot probably could have been done better by one of the previous directors.  It's not that Stephen Hopkins fumbles it.  In fact, his direction is often quite inventive.  The problem is that the scriptwriters seem unsure of what to do, and the frequent rewrites didn't help.  This is still much better than Freddy's Dead, but the whole series should have come to an end with The Dream Master. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989)
Time: 89 minutes
Starring: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Danny Hassel, Kelly Jo Minter, Erika Anderson, Joe Seely
Director: Stephen Hopkins



 

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