A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Movie Review - A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Hey, where did Patricia Arquette go? That doesn't really look like Kristen from the Part 3, but it looks like Joey and Kincaid. Whoa, they pulled one over on us, but I'll go with it. I'm not a huge fan of Part 4 of the Nightmare saga, but I can deal with it because it's still an entertaining go around with Freddy.

Kristen and her 2 surviving friends return from Part 3 to go to high school, where they all make a few friends. But after Kincaid's dog digs up Freddy's bones, he comes back and starts to terrorize Kristen and her friends. Since Kristen can pull people into her dreams, she soon pulls the new friends into the dream to give Freddy another batch of teenagers to terrorize, because he would only be able to kill the original Elm Street Children otherwise. But Kristen pulls all of her friends into the dreams and ends up giving her boyfriend's sister Alice her power.

I'm not going to lie, this movie is really cheesy. There are cheesy science fiction special effects, cheesy 80s montages, and extremely corny jokes spewed out left and right by none other than Freddy himself. If I said that Part 3 wasn't exactly spooky, this one's Casper. There really isn't anything to get scared of in this movie, because a lot of what happens takes place in daylight and/or in the eyesight of dozens of people. Freddy spouting out one-liners like a food-poisoned guy spews his food isn't exactly the spookiest, either.

I don't mind the part where Alice gains all of her friends' powers, actually. I think it's pretty creative to the movie, being that she's the Dream Master and all. I thought that was a pretty interesting take on the new way to defeat Freddy, since all of the other ways they tried didn't work. The rhyme is ridiculous though; honestly, who ritually says something like that?

The deaths in this movie are hit-and-miss. Sometimes the creativity is there, like when the working-out girl turns into a bug. The broken arms get me every time. There is always one standout scene in a Nightmare movie, and that's the one. I don't particularly enjoy bugs myself, so it kind of creeps me out. But other times, the death scenes are just stupid. How about when Alice's brother is fighting an invisible Freddy in a sunlit dojo? Cringe-worthy.

I actually enjoyed the music in this movie, for the most part. Dramarama's Anything, Anything?!?! Great song! (I didn't know who that was until I looked it up, just so you know. I'm not trying to brag or anything.)

Since I started with a hey, I'll end with a hey. Hey, this movie's fun. It's funny. It may not be scary, but it is pretty entertaining to watch some of the cool effects (or ridiculous ones), and to see how they carried on the Freddy legacy. It starts to get over the top from here on out, but that doesn't mean we still can't enjoy the nostalgia of it all, right?