Yeah, I'm not gonna lie to you folks, we're not in for a good one this time. A Nightmare on Elm Street has never been one of my favorite franchises. I like the first three movies, Wes Craven's New Nightmare and that's about it. Why? Because they didn't turn Freddy into a slapstick comedian who occasionally murders people in gratuitous fashion.
After the massive success that Part 3 had, you'd imagine that Part 4 would have a similar idea...and you'd be right. Not so much Dream Warriors as a Dream Master this time around. We see the return of Kristen, Kincaid, and Joey (with nary a Neil Gordon in sight) as they are trying to move on following the traumatic events of the previous year. There has been no sign of Freddy Krueger since they firmly handed him his ass, but Kristen remains skeptical that he is really gone for good.
These are three characters that we've come to know and love. Which is why the film kills off two of them within the first half hour or so while introducing a gaggle of new teens for Freddy to kill off. Also, Freddy gets resurrected by magical dog urine.
Because, y'know...why not?
But, to the shock of all, it isn't Kristen who is going to save the day. Rather, it's her boyfriend's sister, Alice. She inherits Kristen's ability to pull people into dreams and finds herself gaining the abilities of her fallen friends both in her dreams and the real world. With these abilities, she...ends up inadvertently killing several of her friends by way of Freddy's psychic link with her. But, by gaining control of these abilities she is finally able to defeat Freddy in the dream world once and for all with the power of nursery rhymes.
Or something...it's really kind of stupid.
And yes, please, someone try and tell me there are some sort of deep parallels to Greek mythology. I couldn't care less.
And yes, as I said in the beginning - this is pretty much where the pretense of this being a straight up horror series was dropped and dropped into comedy. Hard. Like many people use the complaint in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the humor ruins the tension, I think that's far, far more damning here. In the first two films in particular, Freddy was dark, menacing, and rarely spoke. Even in Dream Warriors, where he got the occasional snarky quip, he was still pretty terrifying.
Now? He's a role that Robert Englund is going to be associated with until the day he dies for it being so ridiculously over the top. And, let me tell you, it just gets worse as we go on.
Some of the special effects are interesting and well-done. For example, one of Freddy's victims this time is deathly afraid of roaches, so he turns her into a roach and crushes her in a roach motel. Simple enough, but the effect (while cheesy by today's standards) still makes my skin crawl just a little bit. It's a hell of a far cry from "Super Freddy" in the next movie, I'll tell you that.
...oh, yeah. The themed dream deaths continue on for a bit. They kind of show up in Freddy's Dead, but the feeling is kind of lost as we'll get to. Some of them are really well done and fitting and a few are just bizarre.
Producer Rachel Talalay has been quoted as saying that Freddy was, by this point, too familiar with the audience by the time of this movie to be scary anymore. It makes sense, after all. When the attempt isn't even made to try to make something scary, it definitely won't be. In all seriousness while I understand the problems they might have thought they'd have doing this, it doesn't excuse the complete lack of effort in trying. And, as New Nightmare would prove in 1994, it was possible to make Freddy Krueger scary again.
...which would get ignored in Freddy vs. Jason, but never mind that. Its day will come.
But for this film, definite no. I actually do have the Nightmare box set of the original six films plus New Nightmare. This one, 5, and Freddy's Dead are ones I never really revisit. People say that the Friday the 13th franchise went on too long - and I think it's hard to disagree when you see entries like Jason Takes Manhattan - but I really think that this is the point where New Line should have packed it in with Mr. Krueger.
I wish it was a joke, but it's literally all downhill from here.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master comes to us from New Line Cinema and is found wherever movies are sold.
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