Review of A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989) by Andy C — 21 Jun 2011

Concluding what is, for all intents and purposes, the original run of the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise satisfactorily would be no easy task. Unfortunately, especially given the alternate degrees of creativity, menace and camp in the first four films, "The Dream Child" falls decidedly short of the precedent its predecessors set.

Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox), the heroine of "The Dream Master," returns once more to do battle with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). This time, the villain's nefarious plan involves enslaving Alice's unborn child, Jacob (Whit Hertford in dream sequences), and using the fetus' dreams to murder more children. As usual, Alice is -- kind of -- aided by a troop of confounded, skeptical friends, all of whom end up dead before the end credits roll.

The real problem with "Dream Child" -- apart from the pregnancy subplot; usually a bad choice in horror movies or really any movie -- is the alarming lack of creativity on display. The death of one teen looks like an outtake from the Mr. Creosote sketch in "The Meaning of Life," while in another a would-be hero is literally transformed into a paper-thin caricature and made to do battle with Freddy. It would be charitable to say this approach was used to spare the audience from seeing the gory demise of a likeable hero, but the characterization suggests it was an intentional, ill-advised choice.

Laziest of all, however, is the movie's attempt to craft horror imagery from motifs evocative of parenthood and pregnancy. From the sight of a mutated, infantile Freddy to the souls of the victims du jour ripping out of their tormentor's back looking like long, tentacle-equipped spermatozoa, the effects tend to be trite, rather than the parent's-worst-nightmare angle the makers probably had in mind. Using a substantially smaller budget and more effective props, David Lynch crafted a fruitful nether world of creeping parental dread with "Eraserhead;" pity he never directed a "Nightmare on Elm Street" installment.