A Nightmare on Elm Street Marathon: The Dream Child

That got weird fast.

 

 

    If the idea of Freddy toying with a unborn fetus sound incredibly strange then congratulations, you are prepared for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child! What's that? You think that making a movie featuring a Freddy turning a man into a motorcycle will clash with the whole creepy kid idea? Then congratulations you're smarter than the people who made this movie!

    This time around Alice (Lisa Wilcox) is back and this time she's pregnant! Yay! And she's just out of high school. Yay? And Freddy (Robert Englund) is once again haunting her. Not yay! With the father of her child Dan (Danny Hassel) and her friends; Yvonne (Kelly Jo Minter), the non-believer, Greta (Erika Anderson), the rich girl and Mark (Joe Seely), the comic book nerd, they learn that Freddy is trying to turn Alice's unborn baby (Whit Hertford) into his demon spawn. But it's okay, because if they can find Freddy's dead mother (Beatrice Boepple) then Alice can stop Freddy once and for all. Again.

 

Oddly enough, still cooler than
Ghost Rider.

    Dream Master didn't try hard enough. Dream Child tries too hard. It feels less like an honest Nightmare movie and more like someone trying to copy a Nightmare movie. The kills are cool and are visually neat, but they don't feel like Freddy kills. Freddy would rather torment his victim then turn him into a motorcycle. I guess the comic book style scene was cool, but still, I'm missing the old scary Freddy. Now, we are in full on gimmick Freddy. Where the kills are all special effect extravaganzas and there a pun around every corner.

    And it's too bad because the story is kinda cool. The idea that Freddy is haunting Alice's unborn baby in order to get at the other kids (Since he can no longer go through Alice, I guess?) is a creepy idea, but the film makes it so silly, with both "Freddy-ized" version of the baby and Alice and even a scene will Alice goes inside herself, into her womb and sees Freddy as part of the womb. And the whole story involving Freddy's mother just makes no scene, leading to what has to be one of the all time worst villain defeats of all time. Spoiler alert: Freddy turns into a baby and his mother puts him back into her womb and locks herself away until the sixth movie. Seriously. How does that even work?
    The movie has a lot of potential, but it just can't pull through with all the silliness going on. The visuals are absolutely great, but are lost in the silliness of the kills. The acting is good, but the actors need to get silly in order to match the scenes. Subtlety goes a long way, but Dream Child replaces it with wild visuals and crazy kills. If the story with Freddy's mother was taken out and the kills were tonded down, this could have been another great Nightmare movie. Instead, this is what we get:

 

This is why kids hate vegetables.

    Okay, so Dream Child isn't the worst Nightmare movie. The filmmakers are clearly trying, Englund is returning to form and the visuals are great. But the story is wasted on silly plot turn and one of the worst endings I've seen in a long time. In some way, this one is so-bad-it's-good, but overall, it's another forgettable Nightmare. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child gets 3 and a half stars out of 6.