Released in 1989, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is a movie that is by no means cautious about what it sets out to do. With four movies in, the Nightmare on Elm Street series had its original classic, a nonsensical follow-up (albeit one that has found later appreciation for its queer themes), a fantastic part three in Dream Warriors, and then standard but solid fare in the fourth installment, The Dream Master. Financially, the movie franchise made more with each new installment.
In what is a rarity for long-running horror series everywhere, The Dream Child continues the story of the previous film’s heroine, Alex. Making its protagonist pregnant gives the story the excuse to have Freddy Krueger as a stand-in metaphor for the difficulties of young single mothers and the fear of parenthood, while upsetting the fractious status quo and general mindsets at the time regarding abortion in the late 80s.
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Inadvertently, with this entry the series feels like it had grown up. The makeup caked on Robert Englund’s face was made to look more aged than previously, and the movie was witnessing traumatized teens now transitioning into traumatized adults.
Freddy Krueger is Living the Dream
New Line Cinema
The visuals in general are some of the best of the series, even from its opening shot, where two bodies thrust against one another as they have sex. Sweaty curves and distinctly human features are lit by a blue moonlight as Jay Ferguson’s creepy schoolyard-like synth plays, quickly descending and becoming more powerful and assaulting.
On a second watch through, you realize that these two bodies are that of Alice (Lisa Wilcox) and the soon-to-be very dead Dan (Danny Hassel, also returning from the previous film) — in the process of conceiving the “Dream Child” that Freddy will utilize to enact so much torture through.
A small army of 61 separate artists are credited in the effects team, with another 12 on makeup (The Walking Dead’s Greg Nicotero is credited in both). Aside from the obligatory fantastic burn makeup of Freddy himself (of which we have become so complacent to but which has always been genuinely game-changing), now defunct techniques like matte paintings are deployed for the film’s bigger establishing shots, and Dream Child must surely be one of the last films to have seen the now obsolete but always impressive art process out.
Elsewhere, this is a movie which leans in to big awesome sets like the grimy, dilapidated wings of a mental asylum, or even M.C. Escher’s fame Relativity print. Watching Krueger chase people along a set of gravity defying staircases really is one of the highlights of the whole series, with the attention to detail in creating the world’s environment (and what exactly Krueger is capable of) not going unnoticed.
Practical Effects in Nightmare on Elm Street
Saddle all of that atop crisp 2D animation, puppetry, and even stop-motion and the whole kaleidoscope of what could be done with effects is utilized without ever coming off as excessive, or even worse, rubbery. Rushed though this production may have been, the quite literal fingerprints of those behind the scenes are all over the dreamy yet nightmarish world of Elm Street. Without hardly ever showing their hand, each of the crew’s actual practical effects remains impressive and a reminder of how missed it is in current day productions both big and small.
From the first scene including a properly formed Freddy Krueger, there is a callback to the very first time we meet him in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street in the alleyway, his arms outstretched to an impossible length so that his clawed hand can scrape against the metallic fencing.
Looking back at that very first intro in the original is always quite rightly met with scoff bemusement that anyone could find this particular pipe cleaner limbed image at all scary. But here (also in Freddy’s introduction), it’s the same trick, with just the one of Krueger’s arms inhumanly long. And not only does it remind us that there is literally next to nothing that this constant antagonist can do, but it works as both a tip of the fedora to its original roots, and a singular middle claw up to its origins as an example of how far the effects really have advanced in just five years.
In the Womb of Dream Child
Take the moment when it is affirmed that the baby inside Alice also dreams. It really gets under the skin that pedophile-turned-cosmic-villain Freddy Krueger is doing all that he can to terrorize this young woman. And in a world of schlocky 1980s practical effects, they really pack a punch to support this reality.
Physically transported into the ultrasound machine, we are surrounded by red blood cells. They cascade around the human child (a puppet stand in) as the visuals fill the screen in such an immersive and almost 3D experience like some bodily version of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s finale images.
Seen in great detail inside the very embryonic sac, the fetus floats peacefully, undeveloped, entirely innocent. It’s visceral, in every sense of the word. Inside with the child, Freddy siphons the souls of Alice’s murdered friends down the fallopian tube and into her child as an entire scene is dedicated to the thing hidden away inside the girl — and the villain that has a hold over her. That is but one example, without mentioning the segment where a character transforms into a motorcycle before your eyes, or the disgusting Freddy Krueger child (also puppetry).
You Snooze, You Lose
However, as a chapter in Nightmare on Elm Street, this really is the unfortunate point where the series begins to make its villain for the ages a joke that we’re no longer laughing with. In the documentary Never Sleep Again, original story writer John Skipp summed the film up perfectly:
For all the film’s (genuinely brilliant) special effects, some really gimmicky moments overshadow the movie, and certain moments just don’t work at all. Take when dorky comic fan Mark positions himself as the hero he keeps sketching in a bid to defeat Krueger, which also alters the villain into “Super Freddy”… a blocky, square jawed monstrosity that moves like a tank. Before this, unfortunately, a then 40/41-year-old Robert Englund would ride a skateboard.
“[It was] visually very interesting, but I think a lot of those things were attempts to cover the fact they had liposuctioned all of the soul and intelligence out of the story.”
The Dream Child of the title also doesn’t make a whole heap of sense. Despite not being born yet, Alice meets said child who even helps her take down Krueger as well… A sign of things to come, sure, and the logic of this series is always open for see-sawing, but it’s still sort of misshapen and never really addressed despite being so vital to the storyline.
Everything is accompanied by some kind of pun or zinger, and it totally dilutes the fear that this character really is all about. It should be said that this is also the point where Freddy just starts calling everyone a “bitch,” reminding quickly of Rick & Morty’s direct parody “Scary Terry.” It doesn’t help either when the film generally — while still looking grotesquely beautiful and technically very impressive — isn’t particularly scary at all, and can amount to some vapid viewing at times.
Wake Up Call
The Dream Child charted the middle segment in a downward decline for Mr. Krueger and the series as a whole. With an extremely rushed production (where actors have openly said there were instances where zero direction was given in a scene), constantly changing script pages, and a cut down, tamer version of the film to conform to ratings, The Dream Child was ultimately met by a poor critical response and was the lowest-grossing film in the series at the point of its release.
Following Dream Child, the series was one film away from original creator Wes Craven returning to reclaim his characters in the self-referential Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Doubling down, his likeminded meta horror film Scream disregarded Nightmare on Elm Street altogether (except for two minutes in to its run time, when the soon-to-be-dead Drew Barrymore flippantly judged that the first movie was good “but the rest sucked”).
Actor Robert Englund recently returned to our screens in the latest (and decidedly very Nightmare on Elm Street themed) Stranger Things, and reminded us of just how impressive a performer he is when given the creepiest material to chew on. Elsewhere, this month alone likewise Horror icons Michael Myers sees out his finale in Halloween Ends, the dungareed doll returns in Chucky Series 2, and a fresh outing for Pinhead and Hellraiser show that the hunger for these characters is still thriving if done right.
Halloween Kills producer, Blumhouse’s own Jason Blum, poked the bear and believed he could coax Englund out of retirement for another new Nightmare, with the CEO bargaining that if anyone could do it, it was him. Coming full circle, even The Walking Dead recently snuck their own Freddy Walker into the show as a neat easter egg and very deep cut for the fans.
Still, watching The Dream Child today, it holds together pretty well all things considered. And arguably, with the recent Roe V Wade rulings, a movie that is brave enough to tackle abortion in the late ’80s is even more relevant today, even if just as a relic of past sensibilities — and an unfortunate continuation of them in today’s age. Will we ever see another Nightmare on Elm Street? That’s uncertain, but we could do so much worse than what we got here.
