Movie Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Even though this isn’t a bad movie, it sort of marks the decline of the series. The last film sort of put a perfect bow on what could have been a fine trilogy (even if the second film is completely removed), but since they needed another one, it makes sense that they just picked off where the third one left off.
The problem with this movie, and with the series to come, is that it starts taking the horror scenes less and less seriously. This movie is also the first movie in the series to establish character traits in the teens purely to be exploited in their dreams. I guess you could say that was present in the last movie, with Freddy killing an ex-drug addict with a bunch of syringes, but that didn’t feel as cheap. It wasn’t the only aspect to her character, and it wasn’t as if the second that was introduced, you could guess that Freddy would kill her in such a way. Here, it’s much less subtle, and it’ll get worse in the future.
Part of the thin characters might be due to the writer strike that was taking place when this movie was being made. Because there wasn’t a strong script, director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger) tried his best to create compelling and memorable visuals, and I’d say this movie succeeds at that.
The surviving teens from the last movie all return, though Kristen is now being played by Tuesday Knight instead of Patricia Arquette. It’s disappointing, given that I think Arquette was one of the strengths of Dream Warriors, but it’s also not a huge deal, since the returning characters all die off fairly quickly. I like Joey’s death the most of the old cast.
We gradually meet our new characters, and none of them are interesting. The new lead is Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox), who’s incredibly boring and monotone in her line delivery. She and Kristen are discussing the nightmares they’re having one day, and she mentions some dream master rhyme from her childhood that used to keep her safe from her nightmares.
Another character’s only traits are she hates bugs and likes working out. Another one has asthma and an inhaler. Another one practices karate. They are all killed in ways that reflect that.
Kristen’s death scene starts out ridiculous, but eventually gets good, and then gets more ridiculous. It’s one of the most interesting scenes in the movie. While on a beach, a Freddy glove comes at her like a dorsal fin from Jaws, and Freddy emerges.
He buries her in the sand, and she appears in the Elm Street house, eventually running to a boiler room. Freddy wants her to use her dream power to call someone into her dream because he wants to kill more people, but she doesn’t want to, knowing what will happen. She accidentally calls Alice, though, who appears.
When Kristen is thrown into an incinerator, she is able to transfer her dream power to Alice, who eventually starts accumulating powers from all her dead friends. I’m not going to say that the plot to Dream Warriors was realistic, but somehow this seems so much more ridiculous.
The scene where the weight lifter/girl who hates bugs gets killed is actually really well done, with some great effects, and clever editing to put it in some kind of dream loop, and Freddy is even able to incorporate both her character traits into her death.
The climactic scene is a big time disappointment, with Alice remembering the dream master rhyme that she mentioned earlier, and using it to kill Freddy. At least seeing Freddy die is neat, as the souls from his chest emerge and rip him apart.
I didn’t mention it earlier, but it’s pretty lame how he comes back to life here, too. In a dream, Kincaid’s dog pees fire on Freddy’s remains, and that’s all it takes.
This movie has some good stuff. The visuals are great, and some of the effects are quite good. The problem is the characters are boring, and the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
It’s not a high point in the series, but it’s also not a low point.
Rating: 6/10
