A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is basically the same movie as A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, except dorkier. What a difference a year makes! That similarity is the result of the creative well having been dried up in five quick years – nothing in The Dream Child isn’t “borrowed” from an earlier Elm Street. But for all that repetition, this thing doesn’t even want to be a horror movie. How awful is that?
The former Dream Master (if they never use the word “dream” in another title – and they won’t – it’ll be all too soon) boiled down the Elm Street format to its basics: Dream killer Freddy Kreuger identifies a set of high school stock types, plows through them. Replaying this basic scenario, The Dream Child is more concerned with exploring the complex dream metaphysics surrounding Freddy himself – hence his body count is substantially reduced, to a mere three. That mightn’t be a problem, if the result was good (hell, the original Elm Street boasts but one more dead), but there’s little else to recommend in The Dream Child. It perverts the series’ underlying surrealistic fantasy so horrendously, things are barely even recognizable as dreams any more. There is a horrid unclarity to these ideas, akin to the awkwardness of Freddy’s Revenge.
When a movie leaves me tremendously apathetic – as this one does – it’s best to just dive headlong into a recap. Here we go. Well, we gotta open with a spooooooooky nightmare – horror movies gotta get your attention, no? Starting with Freddy dead, same as in The Dream Master – and like that one, it takes ‘em a good third of the movie to get him up and running. (Hence one reason for the anemic death toll.) Our dreamer is Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox), ignoring all sane advice about survivors being better off avoiding the sequels (I mean this for the actress and character both).
Following a shower problem which could be fixed with a single good plunging, Alice herself plunges into someS hellscape dungeon, an insane asylum as though interpreted through…well, there are equal misinterpretations of M.C. Escher, H.R. Geiger, and many others. We get, to our immeasurable joy, a dramatic reenactment of the never-seen nun-raping outlined in Dream Warriors – Freddy Kreuger’s siring, with Amanda Kreuger (Beatrice Boepple) his mama-to-be. Along with opening credits sex scene, this lets you know all you need to about The Dream Child’s taste and decorum.
And it’s ricockulously loud, too, louder even than the over-eager and desperate scarifyin’ of The Dream Master – which came by the fault of Renny “Die Hard 2” Harlin. We’ve now a lesser future action director, a Harlin wannabe – shudder! – Steve “Predator 2” Hopkins. He has NO capacity for delivering frights. This is the horror equivalent of “wakka wakka” comedy: cheap gothic ambience and sensory overload compensating for actual creepiness. One can look back at the first Nightmare on Elm Street to see suspense with minimal visual trickery hinting that it’s a dream. Now it’s all unimpressive matte paintings, lightning animation, and new special effects trotted out every minute to no end. It really is The Dream Master, told with less care. I said my fill then, so I’m at a loss for commentary now.
Alice, in her waking life, is due now to graduate high school, alongside but four other meats – excuse me, well-rounded and believable human beings. They are…
Jock (Danny Hassel)
Model (Erika Anderson)
Comic Book Nerd (Joe Seely)
Swimmer (Kelly Jo Minter)
That’s right, spend enough weeks watching nothing but slasher sequels, and eventually you cease to care about character names altogether. Among these reducible types, Jock is most recognizable, for in The Dream Master I’d bothered to identify him as Dan – now Alice’s serious suitor. Lucky for Alice, Jock deflects a lot of the returning survivor threat. Indeed, it is Jock, not Alice, who shall perish before The Dream Child is finally aborted.
In the meantime, Alice is subject to more Dreams Ala Hopkins, which occur apropos of nothing simply whenever the movie’s been bland for too long. There is no other justification – hell, Alice ain’t even asleep when she has these dreams – eh, unless she’s prone to zonking out midday while crossing the park, which is well beyond even the idiotic narcolepsy of The Dream Master. Though this is another wound which comes gushing open soon enough.
But for now, dream time…Freddy time! It’s back to Amanda’s continued rape adventure. Now she’s giving birth, in equal parts Rosemary’s Baby and It’s Alive, but with Hopkins’ characteristic horror illiteracy. Baby Freddy is born, and since it’s a dream, one assumes his real birth didn’t result in a latex animatronic. Said beastiole zooms on over to the discarded Freddy outfit in The Dream Master's church – Seriously, what’s with this sudden fidelity to The Dream Master of all entries?! And Freddy Kreuger arises, in the familiar guise of Robert Englund – forced aboard by contract stipulations, and rightfully doing little to hide his hatred for this purgatory.
Some post-picture pondering provides possibilities to explain the why and wherefore of Freddy’s return – and it’s no flame-pissing canine. What we’ve seen of Amanda isn’t simply pointless spectacle. Indeed, she’s now a conscious entity in dreamland, one who actively opposes Freddy’s rampage – hence Freddy locks her uselessly away in…er, some inaccessible place. Oh, and he needed her to run through this birthing rigmarole to ensure his resurrection – like I said, there is some sort of metaphysics here, but damned if we’re ever terribly keen on it. Though Freddy does assure Alice that “something inside her” enabled his return. Oh, and he refuses to kill her!
We get no explanation yet, but an astute student of life on this planet might be able to parse it out, even from the scant details (and title) so far. But before we can explore that, isn’t it damn time Freddy kill a jerk – a Jock, in fact. Alice awakes in the diner – the same diner as The Dream Master – and phones Jock up at the post-graduation pool party (even now, it’s a mighty stretch for them to justify why Alice isn’t there). She tells tale of Freddy’s return…well, no, she hints obliquely at it, and otherwise says things to mostly ensure Jock’s death. And Jock resolves to collect Alice from the diner – which we’ve learned is a mere five minute walk across the park. Which is exactly why Jock decides to drive there (American), going at speeds in excess of 65 mph.
Does any of this explain why Jock seemingly falls asleep while driving? And yes, he was driving in prior to falling asleep – otherwise, there’s no way he would then die in the real world from an eventual car accident. You know, I hardly think Freddy’s visit was really necessary. Jock would’ve died anyway. And that goes for all of the victims: We get people falling asleep over soup, while swimming, and when specifically told not to fall asleep. Most of these would be fatal, Freddy or no. Man, squeezing an Elm Street tale into seemingly two days (I’m not about to do the brain gymnastics to get that exactly right)…this sort of impatience was one of The Dream Master’s major flaws, and it’s even worse here!
As for the content of Jock’s nightmare…By now, dreams play out like music videos, not stalk sequences, with themes and everything. Jock’s theme is automotives. He speeds his truck, Freddy is there to rip off his own arm for no reason, Jock smashes through the windshield…none of this is fatal (yet), simply because Freddy chooses it not to be. Honestly, the guy is so omnipotent, he could just [snap!] like that take a dude out. Sending each target through a ten minute cartoon routine is beside the point, except it seems Freddy is pretty lonely. Poor thing. For what it’s worth, Freddy ultimately does the body horror thing on Jock – something else Hopkins knows nothing about. As Jock is now upon a motorcycle (don’t ask), Freddy is the motorcycle (again, don’t ask), and all entities meld together in another big fuck-off showy piece of emotional anesthetic. I’d love to see David Cronenberg’s take on such an event (I have…it’s called Crash – the good Crash).
“Better not dream and drive.”
Freddy’s one liners are getting more pronounced…and worse. I mean, c’mon, “This boy feels the need for speed?!” What is that shit?!
Okay, Jock dies, so…Alice gets sent to the hospital. (Logic must never be considered.) And it turns out she’s pregnant with Jock’s strapping seed – okay, kudos to those who saw we were headed here. Soon Alice starts having Freddyless dreams, of a genuinely unnerving lad named Jacob – scary not because Hopkins did something right for once, but because actor Whit Hertford is that same uncanny marshmallow boy whom Sam Neil terrorized with velociraptor claws in Jurassic Park. With what we know, no extra points for guess Jacob here is Alice’s fetus’ spirit. It’s the only way this boy makes sense in overall movie context.
Knowing of Alice’s pregnancy, we can already parse out what’s up. Freddy is using the baby as his conduit back into dreamland. It’ll take Alice a good movie more (well, not “good,” but “long”) to parse this out, which begs the question. For all her problems, she seems most concerned about why Freddy appears when she’s awake – because they’ve dropped that stupid “Alice must be asleep” angle which scuttled The Dream Master oh so well. This misses the forest for the trees, because Alice never once considers stopping Freddy, or preventing deaths, or any of that.
Okay, intermission! Freddy kills Model.
The act itself is another extended, unfunny routine, taking advantage of a home life so cartoonish, we’re never sure if Model’s ever been awake. As for how Model dies…damned if I know. Freddy’s latest vomitous one liners suggest he’s feeding Model herself, but visually it’s just…abstract. For a while, I thought she was allergic to sushi (yeah, that’s something Hopkins would think frightening). There’s something to do with dolls too.
Okay, back to our real concern: ruminating over metaphysical hooey. By the time Jacob has shown up, already Alice has ignored movie-stopping advice left and right. Hell, before Amanda was shuttered away in dream limbo, she admonished Alice to “look for me in the bell tower.” I tell you what, I’d’ve got straight away and checked all the damn bell towers in Springwood! Pinpointing the right one ain’t difficult. That insane asylum (if it’s still Westin Hills, it don’t look it, with its two million square feet of abandoned space – the damn thing looks like “Castlevania”) is a convenient few blocks away. This in the same town with a gigantic abandoned power plant, and 1428 Elm itself forever on the real estate market. Suuuure. So, the thing is, I’d’ve gone there.
Finding Amanda does verifiably stop Freddy dead, this act – which is just a repurposed “find and consecrate a body” mission as in Dream Warriors. We’re 45 minutes from this moment. Even so, once Alice has parsed out the obvious – her baby is Freddy-ready – there’s a pretty obvious solution. One many a sorority girl opts for simply out of habit. Advice that would’ve been best given to this film’s producers as well:
ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!
It’s a…controversial thing, at best, to advocate pro choice, but this is a relatively unusual situation. Keep that baby, and you risk everybody you knowing dying in their dreams. That’s to say nothing of the baby itself, who just may emerge Freddified – there is enough indication this is Freddy’s ultimate goal, when he’s not otherwise busy “entertaining” teens with bad puns and death. But nooooo, Alice is gonna keep her dream child, thank you very much, and those others who know they might die within a day, well, they’re perfectly cool with it. Standards, man!
Okay, well, that still leaves the original solution: Finding Amanda’s remains. Since Alice wasn’t paying attention the first time around, she and the rest must figure this out the hard way…through research. It’s just like a horror sequel to send its characters packing off to the library (or nowadays, to Google). That way, increasingly moronic ciphers can still contend with ever-growing complexity. Oh well, it’s taken for-danged-ever, but one way or another Alice, Swimmer and Comic Book Nerd know they must FIND AMANDA’S REMAINS – I’m sorry for cyber-yelling, but I am very, very sick of this delay.
Intermission! Freddy kills Comic Book Nerd.
This time – another ten minute pause from normalcy – the act is so completely arbitrary, abstract, it barely registers as narrative filmmaking at all. Naturally, the theme is comics. In 1989, there wasn’t much for the ignorant to cull from comics-wise – that is, there weren’t many comic book movies. Batman was a thing then, as was Superman: The Movie, and…that’s about it, as far as the obvious, obvious stuff The Dream Child might steal from. Filter that through the late’80s, with their “Nintendo Power” form of radical bodaciousness, all new wave (and New Line) shapes and confetti in place of blood and ah hah’s “Take On Me” and Freddy on a goddamned skateboard. If the mind doesn’t involuntarily shut down, consider Freddy’s one liners:
“Faster than a bastard maniac. More powerful than a loco madman. It’s Super Freddy!”
What’d I say about them mostly just knowing Superman?
Now…back to business. Swimmer is still alive…Swimmer shall remain alive, because she’s already endured Freddy’s attack upon her (it was swimming themed), and Alice rescued her. By impaling Freddy’s mouth with a pool skimmer. (Ugnghgnghgnghgngh!!!) Now it’s down to FINDING AMANDA, a job which falls to Swimmer – another reason she was preserved, to play John Saxon in the finale, only not die. Meanwhile, as Swimmer is off actually resolving the plot, Alice falls asleep. Yeah, but in an Elm Street that isn’t necessarily a sign of laziness. ALice intends one final confrontation against the Fredster – but to what end?!
Well, there’s a hint Freddy is slowly possessing Jacob – Alice’s baby. Why’s she thinks he’ll finalize it tonight (when we’re still in, like, the first trimester)? It’s the same issue as in Freddy’s Revenge: we have no visual indicator of how far along Freddy is. Oh well, let us simply accept Elm Streets conclude with dream faceoffs, needed or no. That still doesn’t justify running Escher through the art school collage process.
There are other problems…If we recall from before (which we’re meant to do for some facts, but not others – it’s very selective), Alice was the Dream Master. So she’s got all these superpowers. Or she could just show Freddy that nonsensical mirror again like last time and – Oh wait, she does none of that!
Other problem: Freddy cannot kill Alice! Consider it. He needs her alive until Jacob is born. (What happens then, no man can say.) There is nothing Freddy can do to threaten Alice – directly. He can torment Jacob, though not kill him either! I have really no idea what’s at stake here.
Meanwhile, Swimmer goes to the bell tower, like that [snap!]. And all it takes is opening up this “Amontillado”-like brick wall, and Amanda is free. Like that [snap!]. No holy water, no ceremony, just wall demolition. We’re supposed to buy, at this stage, that the police seeking Amanda never did this, so…Well, let’s say there’s a lot of stupid things you need to buy into if you’re watching The Dream Child.
So now Amanda is free, to do SFX battle with Freddy. And Jacob fights Freddy too. Alice just stands there. It’s come to this, three non-alive spirits pimp slapping each other about.
Freddy is banished from whence he came – development hell – as Alice proceeds to have her child. When, I dunno. If any story type fares worse on a two-day time frame than an Elm Street story, it’s a pregnancy story. But at least Alice survives, overcoming the survivor sequel curse. And she won’t even stick around for another chance at death. Credit The Dream Child’s pathetic $22.1 million gross, the lowest for any Elm Street at that point. And that’s with its former, The Dream Master, boasting the highest gross. So much for (poorly) mimicking that entry for all it’s worth.
Actually, I’m at a loss to account for this dramatic reduction in popularity. Sure The Dream Child sucks, but not so very much more than The Dream Master. Could it be nascent Dream Master disfavor? Could it be a sequel every year is too much to ask audiences? Could it be, even more broadly, that slashers as a whole were growing tired by 1989? Could be. The whole horror genre was in dire straits, having gone beyond goofy cornball fun like Evil Dead II into completely harmless non-horror like, well…The Dream Child. For most franchises, this would be an end. But five quick entries is some impressive momentum, which on its own ensures more … after a slightly longer wait.
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
• No. 2 A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
• No. 3 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
• No. 4 A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
• No. 6 Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
• No. 7 Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
• No. 8 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 9 A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
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