A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger
Lisa Wilcox as Alice Johnson
Beatrice Boepple as Amanda Krueger
Whit Hertford as Jacob Johnson
Kelly Jo Minter as Yvonne Miller
Danny Hassel as Dan Jordan
Erika Anderson as Greta Gibson
Nicholas Mele as Dennis Johnson
Joe Seely as Mark Grey

The Dream Child begins a downfall for Freddy Krueger that wouldn't right itself until 1994, which is a long time in movie years. Like the rushed production of Freddy's Revenge, this clearly shows an effort to quickly capitalize on the ongoing Freddy-mania that was populating the mainstream at the time by getting another movie out as quick as possible. You can't really fault New Line for wanting to keep the money train rolling, because how long was America going to stay that in love with a child murderer?

However, it's rushed and it's obviously rushed. Some more time and a few more passes at the script and this could have actually been one of the best in the series. Director Stephen Hopkins has some great ideas that you can see parts of here and there. The idea of Freddy being reborn using the dreams of an unborn child is disturbing and a much darker twist for the character than the last few films. Unfortunately, the "dream child" is nothing more than a plot device, meant to bring Freddy in the world but not do anything substantial with him.

There are some great surreal moments if you look for them. The MC Escher staircase making its way into the dream world was nice, and two of the three kills are as imaginative as they are vicious. Poor Dan survives the the events of The Dream Master just to become fused to a motorcycle and sent crashing to his death. Greta is fed her own intestines. If the film were uncut, you could still see the deaths in grisly details. As they are now, they're tamer than they should be and Freddy's joking is almost at an all-time low.

Speaking of Freddy, his makeup seems worse this time around, in the sense that it looks like makeup and not part of the character. Why the studio decided to change it only a year removed from the last film I have no idea. Robert Englund never ran out of steam as the character, but he more or less excels in spite of the script here than because of it. Even then, Freddy doesn't get much to say other than a cheap pun and "bitch". He's definitely at his most useless here.

There are other half-baked ideas that are brought up and never mentioned again. The "Dream Master" abilities Alice gained in the last movie are completely forgotten. A subplot of Dan's parents wanting custody of their child is brought up and never mentioned again. Everything is just a mess of half-cooked ideas that could have been interesting but never pan out.

That's The Dream Child in a nutshell: it could have been good, maybe even great, but it needed a lot of work that New Line likely wasn't willing to put into it. It was released almost a year to the day as the last film and it shows. Even New Line knew it couldn't maintain the cash cow anymore and so they decided to kill Freddy off. For real this time.

Score: 5.0