Review of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) by Jesse O — 31 Oct 2015

I remember wanting to see this film, back when I saw Nightmare 2, because it was the only film in the main Elm Street series that had anything remotely resembling positive reviews. This film definitely brings things back to basics with Freddy simply haunting the 'teens'' dreams and how they choose to fight Freddy in their dreams rather than Freddy, like in Nightmare 2, using the main character as a vessel for him to come to the real world, which was against the character's original intentions.

Wes Craven, along with Frank Darabont, Bruce Wagner and Chuck Russell, came back to write this movie so that, definitely, helped to put things back on track and the film tries, perhaps not as successfully as in the original film, to make Freddy a terrifying figure.

Again, it doesn't always work perfectly, I think the nature of it being the third movie in a horror franchise didn't do it any favors, because how do you make this character, already established, into something that's fresh and terrifying again.

They certainly tried to, and in a way it worked, but, like I mentioned, not nearly as effectively as the original film. Another thing that surprised me about this film, and perhaps the most surprising thing about this, is the fact that this was a really tame when it comes to blood and gore.

There was this pretty cool scene at the beginning that was the coolest death I've seen in a horror film in a long time. Like there was this guy that was a puppet master and his death, obviously, involved what he does.

So he essentially became a living puppet, with string, slicing his arms and legs open and then sticking from out of his hands and feet, with Freddy as the puppet master. The visual was actually really fucking cool.

But it's also about as gruesome as the film gets. There's a decapitation scene that happens off-camera and then Freddy brings the dismembered it, belonging to Kristen's mother, into frame where the head then proceeds to berate Kristen for something.

That's, honestly, about as violent as the film gets. And, you know what, it actually kind of works because the surrealist scenes involving Freddy Krueger are cool. I mean the acting isn't exactly what one would call great, at least from Heather Langenkamp, who seems even worse than she normally was.

It's not awful, outside of Heather, and they do offer some interesting backstory into Freddy's origin, at least from what led to his birth. So that was cool. Overall, while the film probably hasn't aged as well as the original Elm Street, I thought that this was a good sequel, the best in the franchise.

And that's even including the reboot, A New Nightmare, though I wouldn't include it as part of the original franchise. It's something completely different. But, anyway, the point is that this film isn't exactly as creative or inventive as A New Nightmare, but as far as being a solid horror movie, this one works better than the reboot.

It's a solid film. It's not perfect and it doesn't age as well as one would expect, but all in all, it's a perfectly solid horror movie. I'd recommend it if it ever came on Netflix, as I DVR'd this.

But, yes, it's a solid horror movie and probably as good as the Elm Street sequels would ever get.