A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child

Movie Review - A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

It's great to really see the progression of each movie from creepy to cheesy. The NOES series is one of my favorites, but honestly they came to a point where they didn't even take themselves seriously as a creepy, atmospheric horror movie anymore and became horror-comedies. The good thing is that it seems pretty intentional.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is about Alice from part 4 and her boyfriend Dan accidentally getting knocked up. Whoa Alice! You were a mousy girl in part 4, and now you're pregnant?! But it's cool, I understand. Anyway, Alice gets pregnant, and Freddy uses Amanda Krueger somehow to come back to life, with a deformed mutant baby (we don't really understand how this happens unless I missed something, but does it really matter?), and terrorizes Alice again when she's not sleeping by using her unborn baby's dreams. Another batch of teenagers get killed as Alice tries to put a stop to Freddy once again.

Seriously, the premise for each of these movies is pretty cool, and if they had decided to make Freddy scary like in the first one, I think they would have been pretty good sequels. But they make Freddy intentionally more of a comedian in the sense that he spoils the tension. The word "Bitch" is highly overused by the burned man too, because in almost every scene with a woman, he degrades her with the swear. It starts to get really annoying, because it's like the writers couldn't come up with anything more witty for him to say.

I think that Robert Englund is a much better actor at being creepy than at spouting one-liners. I just want to throw that out there.

Is the creativity in this movie? Of course. Again, the kids are killed by their weaknesses, or at least by what they're interested in. The comic book scene is ridiculous, but you can tell it's supposed to be. It's not scary, but it's kind of cool.

As a reoccurring habit, there's a standout death. When the fashion model-wannabe girl is sitting at dinner and Freddy starts to stuff food in her mouth, and it's all vomit-like and stuck in her cheeks, it grosses me out. I don't really like vomit (the consistency maybe, or just because it's associated with an unpleasant feeling), so that always makes me a bit squeamish.

I like the movie. I think it goes really well with part 4, and I like how they made some of the sequels go together in a sequence instead of throwing all new characters at us every time. The effects are really cool and disgusting, and they always have some sort of stringy-veiny-burny-things that come out of Freddy that are kind of wet and squishy looking. I really like that, and the use of imagination with the souls coming out of Freddy's body. Everything is a dream, so it's good to see that they used the idea of zany dimensions for the Dream World to their advantage.

As far as how the characters act, though, they are quite stupid. Right off the bat, Amanda tells Alice to look in the tower of the asylum to lay her body to rest. But she seems to forget about that until the middle to end of the movie. Why didn't she just do it and get it over with?

The fact that Alice's unborn baby makes appearances in her dreams and is older is pretty cool, but not really explained as to why he appears like he's 8. It also takes into consideration that babies have control over their dreams. Interesting...

Overall, the movie is really entertaining. It's not something that you want to sit down and watch for a suspenseful, thought-provoking time, but it's good for special occasions like watching with friends at a party or Halloween night. All of the sequels remind me of Halloween; I think they just go together well. It's fun to watch, especially with people. But you won't get any deeper meaning from it, just laughs.

Last updated: 2010-01-18 21:47:29 by user01