Review of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) by Adam R — 30 May 2011

Renny Harlin is far from a great filmmaker, though he does excel when adding an undercurrent of dark humor to what would otherwise be terrifying, almost absurd situations. That talent was best realized with "Deep Blue Sea," but Harlin makes a reasonably strong effort in his one and only contribution to the sprawling "A Nightmare on Elm Street" series.

Things start out gruesome when the three surviving heroes from the previous film ("Dream Warriors") are violently dispatched. By the time the first act ends, Joey (Rodney Eastman) has once again fallen prey -- this time fatally -- to his affinity for seductive women, Kincaid's (Ken Sagoes) proves inadequate against a resurrected Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) in a showdown at the junk yard where the killer was last laid to rest and Kristen (Tuesday Knight) is consumed in the flames of the iconic boiler room -- but not before setting Freddy up with a new nemesis.

Through some sort of mystical bullet, Kristen's friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox) becomes the Elm Street children's last hope, her body now containing Kristen's soul -- or something. After the memorable, imaginative deaths of "Dream Warriors'" leads in the first act, "Dream Master" settles into a dull cycle of exposition periodically interrupted by scenes of carnage that, while hardly awful, have nothing on early dispatches of characters and further Freddy's descent into a homicidal version of the Riddler with worse jokes.

There are even some elements of the movie that seem to contradict "Elm Street" lore. Though it's always been clear Freddy could control space within dreams, he never tampered with time, making Alice and boyfriend Rick's "Groundhog Day"-esque never ending loop preventing them from saving a friend seem suspiciously out of place.