A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

The fifth film in a series with nothing left to say feebly recycles the prior film’s storyline, with its survivors facing Freddy Krueger’s umpteenth resurrection as he’s literally reborn in a scenario reminiscent of Larry Cohen’s “It’s Alive” (1974). The predictable massacre of their circle of friends ensues.

Unfortunately, the screenwriters decide to reprise the religious theme (this time they employ the restless soul of Krueger’s mother, one Sister Amanda who took her own life). Worse still, they decide to drag the protagonist’s future son into all this. The plot has sunk to the level of soap opera-like twists and turns, but Hopkins’s film doesn’t particularly shine on the cinematography front either. With the exception of a couple of intriguing turns – the scene inside the comic book and the one in the Escher world – this time the nightmares are depicted in a monotonous way that’s neither terribly inspired nor imaginative.

Robert Englund’s Freddy is reduced to a clownish character, unbelievably chatty, firing off quip after quip and taking more hits than Wile E. Coyote. Thanks to the undisputed expertise of the returning David B. Miller, makeup and special effects maintain a high level of efficacy, but that’s not enough to bolster a tiresome product with no true “raison d’être”.

At any rate, the return on investment (with a budget of $6 million, the film grossed 22 million in the US), although lower than that of Renny Harlin’s prior installment, was still enough to convince the powers that be at “New Line Cinema” to greenlight the upcoming “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” (1991).