What is there to say about A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child? Not much I suppose as the film was a bit of a let down. The opening scene is Alice and Dan, from the fourth film, having sex before their graduation. Generally all seems well for our two survivors, new friends, new life, and a promising relationship, until Dan dies that is and Alice finds out briefly afterwards that she is pregnant. Freddy is back again and as a side project to his mundane teen killings he's contriving a more permanent body as he enters through the mind of Alice's sleeping unborn baby. Dealing with the stress of Freddy coming back, her friend's dying all over the place again, and being pregnant Alice is struggling to fight off whats to come. Not all is at fault though, Alice has help from an unlikely entity, Amanda Krueger, Freddy's mother.If you haven't guessed by my inconsistent posting record that I watched these films awhile ago. Most I wrote down thoughts after seeing so my reviews have been based on those brief commentaries but this is one where I forgot to write a few sentences of the review down as an outline, so I'm purely going off from memory and tidbits of info on IMDB. As blury as some may be I do remember a distinct feeling of having my time being wasted while watching the film. I was not pulled in because there was no plot. Really, it's aimless wandering for the most part, and typically I don't mind shallow almost absent plots but having one with watery characters was just to much of a miss to be a good film. The deaths continue to be creatively concieved but non are so much scary as just weird (Greta's death anyone?). The horror in this I'd say is in the scene where they show the attack on Amanda Krueger, its not graphic as it doesn't show the rape but watching Freddy's future maniac father (England without makeup) stalk through the crowd is pretty effective in capturing that random horror to the whole scenario. Also, the film plays with that hopeless Rosemary Baby element, what's growing inside of you is killing you, and it works out proactively towards the film.
This is where I regret watching the documentary before the films as I remember the actors mentioning that that director was never in one place as he had to address other issues on set, leaving the actors to direct themselves. It shows, on both accounts, in acting Laurie Wilcox returns as Alice and she's comfortable enough in her part where she's convincing, but it still carries an peculiar note to it as it did in the last film. Alice has a new black friend and as the actress mentions in the documentary, she lives! That's The Dream Child for ya, breaking stereotypes since 1989. Let's give it up to Super Freddy actor Michael Bailey Smith for not only tacking the role of Freddy but being brave enough to show his ass on film (yes that is not Dan's ass in the opening scene, I hate to disappoint you).
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 is one of those films where no one stopped to notice how bad things were. It may have helped if they nixed the the Elm Street teen killings and drove the story more towards the rebirth of Freddy and expanded more on his roots. I don't hate the film but I'd say a low dislike is fair enough. I didn't dislike Dream Master but maybe the slasher plot line that follows in the next two films drowns my neutral viewing experience a bit. Freddy's one liners become glaringly annoying at this point and his makeup is in all it's pizza face glory. I feel like my review would have a lot more positive notes if I had written after watching the film cause all I can recall is the negative, so in truth maybe it's not best to take my advice on the review this week. Maybe the only honest statement I can tell you is that I did feel like I wasted a good movie experience after watching it, all missing plots and bad directing aside.
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