Wes Craven's New Nightmare

1994

 

Directed by:  Wes Craven

Written by:  Wes Craven

Starring:  Heather Lagenkamp, Robert Englund and Miko Hughes.

 

From IMDB:

"A demonic force has chosen Freddy Krueger as its portal to the real world. Can Heather play the part of Nancy one last time and trap the evil trying to enter our world?"

 

 

 

I saw this one in the theatre.

 

Hey there's my buddy Bodhi Elfman!  Yay.  That guy is CRAZY talented!!  I would love to put that cat in a film!  We attended acting school together many years ago.

 

Fun premise - all the actors playing themselves.  The real Freddy is trying to get back in the real world though Heather Lagenkamp's son.

 

This is a strong movie considering it's the sixth in a series that showed some pretty harsh decline after the first piece of brilliance was forged.

While New Nightmare isn't overly scary in any real way, it's fun and possesses hardly any cheese.

As a real horror fan I love all self indulgent pop references.

In the end credits it says Freddy Kruger played himself.

 

I'm giving it 3.5 Bloody Eyes out of 5.  Had it contained any real scares it would have gotten a clean 4.

 

 

Nightmare on Elm Street 5 - The Dream Child

1989

Directed by:   Stephen Hopkins

Written by:  Story by John Skipp, Craig Spector and Leslie Bohem, Screenplay by Leslie Bohem

Starring:  Robert Englund and Lisa Wilcox

From IMDB:

"Alice, having survived the previous installment of the Nightmare series, finds the deadly dreams of Freddy Krueger starting once again. This time, the taunting murderer is striking through the sleeping mind of Alice's unborn child. His intention is to be "born again" into the real world. The only one who can stop Freddy is his dead mother, but can Alice free her spirit in time to save her own son?"

I'm not doing so great here.  I'm 45 minutes into this thing and so far I have nothing to say.  My wife made a comment after watching the first few minutes of the film - where all the teenagers are at their graduation.  The parents are acting like cliché bad parents. 

My wife:  "People would never act that way."  Nail on the head.  We'll suspend our disbelief when it comes to monsters and angels.  A 100 foot gorilla is fine but when people behave in ways we don't believe they would act - then we're thrown out of the picture.

The fashion is sure better than NmOE st. 4.  Not so much hair in this one.

Freddy seems to grow more and more omnipotent with each film.  It gets to the point where you're just watching for zaniness - the new ways to kill.  Every blow dealt to Freddy is utterly ineffective so you just don't care any more.

Then in the last few minutes they come up with some far fetched device and Freddy is vancoushed again - till the next time.

This installment certainly had some fun set pieces - though many of them were just matte drawings, they were inspired.

The little kid was pretty good.  You won't hear me say that too often.  Kids usually fail on fairly large levels. 

One of the least frightening installments of the series.  Not even a single jump.

I would have liked to see Daniel's grasping parents get theirs.  That would have been satisfying.

Huh?  What the hell - nice rap tune to close out the credits.  Another product of the times.

But in the end there's little I can do but love the franchise horror series.  I can watch them over and over.  What's wrong with me?

I give this one 2.5 Bloody Eyes out of 5