After she kicked Freddy's ass in the previous installment of "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, Alice and her boyfriend are graduating high school and planning a summer trip to Europe. Everything would be just fine, but the nightmares are once again entering her everyday life. While at the start, Freddy is present just as one of the maniacs in the insane asylum, but as the nightmares progress things start to change. Alice is shocked to see a nun giving a birth to a demonic baby, which is actually symbolizing the rebirth of Freddy Krueger. The nightmares are back and her friends start dying.
Out of all the horror movies I watched in my early days, I remember Freddy being my first true boogeyman. I was around 10 years old when I sneaked in a couple of Elm titles from the video store and after watching them my dreams were not the same. The idea of a monster like Freddy Krueger was something truly special. With his modus operandi of using peoples dreams as an ultimate battlefield, the authors directly targeted almost every movie lover and therefore Freddy became THE movie monster.
From the sequel point of view, "A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child" uses a rather new twist. Until now we had Freddy working through a poor soul or using other people as a filter to get their friends into his dream zone. Now we have something that really is, let's say, rather stupid. We are introduced to Amanda Krueger, a nun who was raped by a dozen of demented patients and the result is ol' Freddy who is now certifiable evil from his day one.
The whole premise would sound shabby, but the screenwriters elevated it to a new dimension of strangeness - Alice is pregnant and Freddy is haunting the dreams of her unborn baby and therefore he is able to attack her and her friend. This rather pale concept doesn't deliver anything special and "The Dream Child" is not by far as entertaining as any of the previous "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies.
 
We are used to a certain degree of (black) humor in the Elm series, but in the opening graduation scene some things are so distorted that it looked like they are trying to create a parody out of this movie. I really wasn't appealed with the goofiness shown by some parents and a football coach in their initial in front of camera experience. The good thing is that this kind of "humor" was present just at the beginning, as afterwards we just have some typical Freddy remarks.
We all know that one of the true strengths of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies was always the way Freddy takes care of his victims. Just remember the way Johnny Depp went "out of the bed" in the original, or the girl that "always wanted to be on TV". With the previous sequels, I've seen the murder ideas either developing in a more gross fashion (which naturally I like), or in the worst case scenario Freddy would just use his glove. In "The Dream Child" we just have a couple of kills and the majority of them were pretty decent. We have situations from "becoming one with a motorcycle" to entering the Freddy universe as an action comic character. The effects in these kills were a bit over the top, but I would always chose them over the CGI stuff all new filmmakers tend to use.
Throughout the movie, combination of bleak scripting and the cast that wasn't delivering anything special resulted in that the movie didn't do anything special for me. Hour and a half just passed by and I wasn't even mildly entertained.
I would just like to do a special mention of the kid who played Jacob. His performance in some scenes was top notch - the little guy really looked creepy.
I am a buff for horror movies from 1980s and slasher is my favorite genre, but "A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child" just didn't do it. Although the visual aspect of the movie, as well as directing was solid, the screenplay really complicated things and made this movie look like something that was done without any passion. In comparison with some of the other sequels, this one is surely on a lower bottom of the scale.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Nightmare on Elm Street 5
MOVIE YEAR: 1989
DIRECTOR: Stephen Hopkins
WRITING CREDITS: Wes Craven, John Skipp
GENRE: Horror, Slasher
CAST: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Erika Anderson
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 89 min
RATING: 3/10
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child Website/IMDB Click here
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child Trailer Click here
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