In A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, a year has passed since Alice Johnson faced and defeated Freddy Krueger. Alice has now graduated from high school, and is trying her best to move forward with her life.
However, Alice is continually haunted by dreams associated with Freddy. The dreams involve Freddy’s mother, Amanda, and on one occasion her nightmares inexplicably resurrect Freddy.
With Freddy back on the scene, Alice’s life, and the life of those around her are put in danger. This includes the life of Alice’s unborn baby.
Directed by Stephen Hopkins, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child stars Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, and Danny Hassel. The film is the fifth entry in the Elm Street film series, and as you might expect, the wheels are starting to come off at this point.
Oh, they haven’t quite come off just yet, and The Dream Child still has a little bit of gas in the tank, but everything is beginning to wobble considerably. It’s fair to say Part 5 marks a point in the series where everything is a bit directionless and it’s all starting to become nonsensical.
In fact, Freddy’s latest resurrection is so wishy-washy that no one really bothers to explain it. Not that it matters, there’s no depth to the material and very little story here, just a string of set pieces loosely strung together.
In terms of the set pieces, the level of creativity is still high and this is at least a selling point of The Dream Child. The script may be garbage but the production crew are trying, and this comes across throughout the film.
None of the set pieces and death scenes are peak Elm Street material, but a couple aren’t bad and the film looks good regardless. So, it’s a win for the ideas, the set design, and the cinematography, just not a win for anything else.
Well, that’s not being entirely fair. Robert Englund is once again superb as Krueger, although he is sadly reduced to delivering a goofy take on Freddy this time around.
So… yeah. A bit ‘meh’ really.
There’s not a great deal that can be said about The Dream Child and not much to be said that’s any good. The film exists because A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was such a financial success, and this is evident from the flimsy and clearly very rushed script.
Should you wish to overlook the film’s shortcomings and watch A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child anyway, the movie is available on digital download. The Dream Child is also available on DVD and Blu-ray as part of the Elm Street movie collection.
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