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A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child Movie Review

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is a 1989 fantasy slasher film directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Robert Englund and Lisa Wilcox. It’s a weak sequel.

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“Kids… always a disappointment“

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The pregnant Alice finds Freddy Krueger striking through the sleeping mind of her unborn child, hoping to be reborn into the real world. This is definitely one of the weakest entries in this series, one that had nothing new or interesting to offer at this point in the franchise’s run. There is a distinct lack of fresh ideas that plagued this movie from start to finish.

Lisa Wilcox did the best that she could in such a weak role and others fared even worse as they are just there to be killed off eventually. As for our big baddie Freddy Krueger, I did not care for what they did with him here. Every single storytelling or characterization choice was quite bothersome in this messy sequel.

The whole baby storyline was absolutely ridiculous. It was the only new element in this movie, but let’s face it, not everything that is original is actually good. This was not great. In fact, it was so silly and so dumb that it made the movie laughably ludicrous.

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There is one strong aspect to this flick and that has to be the special effects. This fifth Elm Street movie heavily moved into fantasy tropes, which resulted in so many visually impressive sequences with the gore and practical effects being particularly inspired. There is a lot of imagination in those scenes, but they were seriously hurt by that campy humor and cringe-worthy dialogue. Needless to say, it’s never scary at all.