No, really. What is this?
We've come oh so far in such a short amount of time! Five Elm Street movies in as many years, that sure is something. I will say, however, that while the series easily could have ended after...well, after the first film, at least each sequel tries to put some kind of unique spin on the formula. Yeah, it's still all "Freddy Krueger kills kids in their dreams and they die in real life" but in every new film the mythology is expanded and the same ol' same ol' is the same ol' same ol' but with new packaging. It's almost admirable! Heck, maybe it is admirable. Of course, that doesn't mean that The Dream Child isn't a slog to sit through and ultimately a big pile of hot garbage. But, you know, silver linings, etc etc.
Alice, the unlikely dream master of...umm, The Dream Master, is ready to graduate from high school and she's horny for sex times with her boyfriend Dan. Freddy Krueger is but an unpleasant memory...or is he? Alice dreams that Freddy is back. Does that mean Freddy is back? Yes. Yes, it does.
"But how?" you cry. "Did not the unlikely dream master kill the dream killer? I thought we were done here."
"HA HA HA!" I laugh right in your face. "Evil never dies! And by 'evil' I mean the folks at New Line Cinema who churned out sequel after sequel so long as folks like us kept paying to see them!" And then I turn into a motorcycle and I drive away.
Look, Freddy's resurrection all makes perfect scientific sense. All of Alice's sex-having gave her a serious case of the babies. Because unborn babies apparently don't do anything except float around in utero and dream all the time, Freddy is able to use Alice's unborn baby as a dream portal to lure more kids to their deaths. DUH.
The only way that Alice can stop Freddy for good is to find the body of his mother, Amanda, because for some reason her body was left in the asylum where she committed suicide and an empty coffin was buried at her grave. Again, DUH. Also, this is the asylum, which has been in Springwood, Ohio this whole time:
sure
As I said, at least they kind of tried to do...something, right? And also as I said, The Dream Child stinks. It's terribly dull and all the Freddy parts are terribly stupid (he really does turn into a motorcycle) (and also he turns into "Super Freddy") (oh my god I can't believe I just had to type SUPER FREDDY). At one point, we're inside Alice's uterus and Freddy is...Freddy is her uterine wall. Did I really experience all of this, or did I fall asleep and this was all some sort of twisted nightmare of my own making? That must be it. No one could have written a script that said "And then Freddy is her uterine wall" and then that movie got made. I just don't believe it. One thing I know for sure, though, is that after watching A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child...I am 90 minutes closer to my inevitable death. Hooray!
I was all prepared to say that this one is the worst of the entire series, but you know what? I think Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare might be EVEN WORSE! You'll have to let us know. (I remember seeing it in the theater complete with red and blue 3D glasses, because I am super old.)
ReplyDeleteEven though The Dream Child is bad the Final Nightmare is 10x worse. That is just the facts, Ma'am. I mean, Freddy rode a broomstick in the latter (just like the Wicked Witch of the West). That's when I threw my hands up and said, "You know what? These movies are not good anymore and Fred Krueger is now officially an annoyance."
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