Summary:
Alice, the powerful dream warrior, finds herself beset by the nightmares of her unborn infant child.
My Thoughts:
Okay, so, here is a prime example of a film that, if you’ve watched and taken seriously every entry in the series thus far, will make a lot of sense and actually elevate the series as a whole. It’s also a movie that, if you haven’t been paying attention (a weird thing to say about the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series), you’ll probably end up lost and confused as to what exactly is going on. This film doesn’t sugarcoat the rules; it expects that, if you’re here to watch “Nightmare on Elm Street V”, then you’ve seen entries I-IV. “Nightmare on Elm Street V” is the darkest of the “Elm Street” movies thus far, and it also features the most gloriously disturbing return of Freddy we’ve seen. “Nightmare on Elm Street V” is a true treat for fans of the original… up until the climax.
This entry starts with our protagonist from “IV”, Alice, whom, if you remember correctly, had inherited the powers of Kristen, the dream warrior, in the previous entry. She and her boyfriend have sex during the opening credits (a weird and lengthy scene), and after she takes a shower. Alice starts to dream in the shower, and as she does, she is transported to the insane asylum where Amanda Krueger, Freddy’s mother, worked as a nun when she was a girl. In her dream, Alice becomes Amanda, and she experiences Freddy’s horrible conception (Freddy’s mother was accidentally left in the asylum when it was locked, and raped by the inmates hundreds of times). I actually thought this opening scene was one of the creepier scenes of the series; even when compared to some of the sequences in the first “Nightmare on Elm Street”, we never approached the level of darkness we reached in this entry. That dream sequence is far more grounded than some of the other sequences in the series, too, which is interesting because it makes this entry feel grittier, dirtier, and overall just grosser (and that’s a good thing for horror films).
As the film goes on, it becomes apparent that Freddy is influencing Alice’s unborn child to dream about his mother’s rape and pregnancy, thus giving birth to him in the dream world once more. Freddy’s rebirth in this movie is weird and gross and all-around pretty awesome. The images in the sequence are graphic and disturbing, and Freddy’s actual return was enough to give me chills (I’m a fan of Freddy, just remember).
From both a world building and a story perspective, I love the idea that a dream warrior can be powerful enough that even her unborn infant can begin to influence people while they’re awake. In using an unborn child’s dreams they explain away the plot holes that some of the other films had, like how Freddy was able to attack random people without them ever dreaming of him. Also, in setting a lot of this film in a dream-version of the asylum where Amanda Krueger was raped, we learn a few more details about Freddy’s backstory.
If you were to watch this movie as a standalone film, I feel like you would be hopelessly lost. This is probably the most experimental of the Freddy movies, to both it’s benefit and it’s downfall. Like I mentioned before, if you’ve seen every entry and generally remember how the rules work, then you can probably follow what’s going on, but if you haven’t watched the other entries you’ll probably start to question how things are happening rather quickly. For example, there’s one scene where Alice’s boyfriend Dan is walking through the dream in his normal clothes, and when he hears something behind him, he suddenly spins around and is instantly dressed like a knock-off terminator. If you’ve watched the other movies, you can surmise that turning into the terminator is Dan’s dream power, but if you haven’t seen the other movies, you’ll probably be stuck wondering why the heck Dan suddenly is dressed as a retro-punk dude with weird guns sticking out of his side.
While the first two-thirds of this film have a creepier atmosphere than many of the “Elm Street” sequels, the climax just didn’t really work for me. Towards the end of the movie, Alice’s unborn child, whom she names Jacob, is able to manifest himself in the dream world and fight off Freddy to save his mother. On paper, I’m sure this looked cool, in reality, the climax is just Freddy and the kid yelling back and forth at each other before we get one or two middling practical effects. I feel like every “Elm Street” movie after the first one has struggled to stick the landing, but this one was one of the more disappointing endings primarily because I thought the first two acts were actually pretty compelling.
Verdict:r
“The Dream Child” is another middling entry in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, but if you like Freddy, it still has plenty of moments that make it worth watching. If you’ve made it this far, you might as well keep going! Only two entries left (not counting the garbage remake)!
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