Review of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) by Logan A — 08 Jul 2012

Brilliant at some moments but absolutely atrocious in others, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 - The Dream Master marks a point in the franchise that could have lead to a continued recovery or a continued downturn, and it went for the continued downturn.

Abandoning the fun and interesting premise from it's much better predecessor, Nightmare 4 even goes as far as taking a dump all over Nightmare 3 by quickly killing-off the surviving characters from that movie that we grew to love.

The premise for this one is far less interesting and marked with lots of corny and stupid moments. Lisa Wilcox's performance as the main heroine is surprisingly wooden, and a lot of the kills set new standards for silly, although Robert Englund gives his typically strong performance and Freddy even cracks some unusually funny one-liners.

A new low for the series is set when Rick battles an "invisible" Freddy on a cheap set, which is a clear indicator of a point in the movie where the production-company ran out of money before they ran out of kids that needed to die.

Nightmare 4 dashes the high hopes we had for this franchise after the surprising success of Nightmare 3 and devolves into a dull, uninspired and cheap horror-flick that will set the tone for the rest of this once great franchise. This is an enrty in the franchise that'll make you sleep a little less easy.

But if nothing else, the poster for this movie is really cool.