Are you ready for Freddy? Well, no sooner than a year after the fourth entry hit theaters, New Line Cinema must have felt that you were because, ready or not, here's entry number five, The Dream Child. I have a small hunch New Line was riding the Freddy cash train at this point (you think?), and were not as interested in putting out a quality film compared to making $, because, well, quality this one isn't. What is it then, exactly? A confusing, schizophrenic, played out mess, that's what. Details to follow...

Story wise, the lovely Lisa Wilcox returns as part four's Alice who we find just graduating from high school. Alice is apparently knocked up (from part four's hunky Dan) and suspects that Freddy is trying to be "reborn" through her own child by manipulating her unborn baby's dreams...I think. Freddy needs to be reborn? Ok...then how is he killing people if he is still, well, dead? Through the unborn kid's dreams? Alice's dreams? Who the fuck knows. Dream Child also attempts to build on the Amanda Krueger storyline from part three, something about Amanda being Freddy's mom, Alice about to give birth, hell, I don't know. It's all one big confusing mess...if you figure it out, let me know. Freddy's back, he's spitting out one liners and teenagers are dying. That's all I know.

Dream Child has always felt like a sort of schizophrenic kind of movie. After the truly mainstream vibe of the fourth sequel, I know originally that a lot of the people involved on this one stated that they were going back to the darker tones of the first film, and there is some of that vibe here...somewhat. On the other hand, you still have the commercial elements of parts three and four, so it's almost like two different films and neither one is very good. One positive is that the film looks really good, it has a nice Gothic vibe to it and the set design and such are all top notch. These films always look good visually, and while the special effects are over the top as usual, they still work some twenty years later after it was made.

However, for all the hub bub about making an "original" and darker film, the formula is relatively the same. Teenagers try to figure out how to kill Freddy, Freddy kills teenagers by playing on their fears...

As usual, there's a new batch of teenybopper's showing up for Freddy to off in various ways. The first kill, as the character of Dan becomes fused with a motorcycle into a sort of demented transformer is pretty cool, as is the "force feeding" scene of Greta, as Freddy force feeds a wannabe model her own innards. Yum. The less I speak of the "Super Freddy" sequence the better, and as for Freddy himself? Well, he's got kind of an "old age" Freddy look as apparently he's not as strong since losing all those souls at the end of part four. The make-up design reflects this, as he looks, well...old. However, he's not altogether wimpy and does the usual Freddy business as only Freddy can. The one liners, however, are really bad in this one and the whole character is just sorta played out. I still love the bastard anyway, so there.

So in summary the good stuff (foxy Lisa Wilcox, good fx and set design) just can't outweigh the bad (crappy acting, confusing as hell plot, Freddy jumping the shark) and you know what? For all of this flick's badness, I still had a somewhat good time watching this one. It's hard to believe these films are over 20 years old, and I'm feeling somewhat nostalgic for the series, crappy sequels included. But you know, it's still a pretty shitty movie, isn't it?