#thedreamchild

The Nightmare on Elm Street series proves again it’s completely run out of ideas with Part 5: The Dream Child. It’s got a couple of inventive kills but no real scares and with the series’ increasing tendency to have its boogeyman crack unfunny jokes, the best it can do is alternate between "tiresome" and "embarrassing".

Set nearly a year after the previous film, Alice (Lisa Wilcox), is now dating Dan (Danny Hassel), begins seeing Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) in her dreams again. When the razor-fingered killer manages to strike even when Alice remains awake, she wonders how it’s possible. The clue rests in the tormented soul of his mother, Amanda (Beatrice Boepple). For Amanda and her friends to live, they’ll have to decipher this new mystery.

You know a franchise is running on steam when it a) goes to Space, b) has an apprentice take up the mantle of the killer or c) the slasher makes it their new mission to be reborn, impregnate the female lead, or steal away her kid. I’ll let you guess which doomed path this latest chapter has picked. I want to say there was a way to make it work, but this central idea is merely an excuse to bring Freddy back despite fairly definitive defeats twice in a row. This time, he returns as a horrific and phony-looking Freddy baby that grows up to sow terror again. Effective horror films make you want to close your eyes. This one keeps yours wide in disbelief.

You won’t care about the characters and you can usually figure out not only who is going to be sucked into one of Krueger’s nightmares sequences next, but what the gimmick of the scene will be from the limited development they’re given. The worst is reserved for Mark (Joe Seely). The teen’s a comic book fan which means we’re treated to a bunch of pages drawn by an artist who clearly doesn’t know the medium. The pages’ margins are all over the place, there’s no color, not even any speech bubbles! Once he’s drawn into his funny books by the child killer, it’s devastating to anyone who ever thought Freddy Krueger was frightening. It's even worse than the beach scene from “The Dream Master”… At least the special effects are pretty cool overall. That particular kill is so bad it makes you want to disown the series but the rest are creative.

The Dream Child dives further into the character of Amanda Krueger, which is to say it elaborates on the backstory of Freddy Krueger in a way that isn’t satisfying. I like The Dream Warriors but their reveal that Freddy was evil from day 1 undermines the character and a large chunk of this film does it even further.

This fifth entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street series is only for die-hard fans. Even then, it’s a laborious endeavor. The special effects are the only aspect of it that work, which still doesn't mean much considering they're offering us baby Freddy. (On Blu-ray, July 13, 2018)