Movie Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
Just like the last movie in the series, this picks up right where the previous movie left off, picking up with the surviving characters and also introducing a bunch of new characters to get killed off. True to the recent trend, these deaths typically relate to the only character trait that these characters have.
This is a fun movie, but I wouldn’t call it good. It’s got some creative dream sequences that are a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in this movie that’s really scary. Take the dream sequence in the guy’s comic book, for example. It’s a fun scene, taking inspiration from a-Ha’s “Take on Me” music video and vintage comic books. But look at Super Freddy.
It’s far more goofy than scary.
The plot is a bit of a mess, but I ended up liking the protagonist, Alice (Lisa Wilcox) enough to make me care at least a little bit. I really didn’t like her performance in the previous movie, and she’s a lot better here. I actually had to check to see if it was the same actress, like they did with Kristen between the third and fourth movies, because she looked a little different, and I thought she was good in this movie. I was surprised to find it was the same actress.
This movie’s a good time. It’s not really trying to be anything more than that, but I sort of wished it was. I wished it attempted to be scary. The goofy one-liners are too over the top in my opinion.
I must say, though, the climax is a big letdown. I think the movie, as convoluted as its plot was, was setting up something better than what happened in the end, but I’m not going to say more than that.
Rating: 5/10
