A Nightmare on Elm Street part 5, picks up after its predecessor (Part 4) had become the biggest box-office instalment of the franchise so far. A tough act to live up to.
THE PLOT OF A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5
The film opens up with previous heroine Alice having bad dreams. It’s been many years since I’ve watched this so much so that it’s basically like watching a new film as many of these stories have started to blur into each other over the years. The start is nightmarish sequence where Alice dreams she is Amanda Krueger the nun that was raped by 100’s of inmates at the lunatic asylum to bear the child known as Freddy Krueger.
What’s immediately obvious in the director Stephen Hopkins style, which is decidedly more fantasy / gothic. It sets the scene nicely for the movie. Anyway the movie proper starts off with Alice graduating high school. She’s about to enter the world with a new hope, football star boyfriend all, should be good except for the lingering nightmares of Freddy Krueger. The nightmares persist and Freddy is able to claw his way back into Alice’s reality bit by bit, through the dreams of her unborn child.
Anyway I guess the question is can Alice and the new friends she has in her life survive the fifth coming of Freddy Krueger? Well, that my friends is where you’ll need to watch the film!
THE VERDICT
With the benefit of age, I’ve been able to appreciate how hard it is to keep a horror franchise fresh into its fifth instalment. I don’t think at part 5 the creators would have been able to keep the vibe of the first film going this long. With the films gradually going from slasher film to fanstasy horror, this has kept the franchise fresh. The effort in production was certainly put into this one with some out of this world horror / nightmare sequences.
Despite the production values and the different direction the film went in, it copped some “mixed” reviews at the time. I think maybe 80’s style horror had gotten a little stale or audiences grew sick of it rather than this flim being particularly generic. The kills in this one really took it to a new level with some rather disgusting special effects and great nightmare sequences. Is it the classic that the original movie was? I’d have to say no, but this is a great ride. The film is well made, and the movie as a standalone movie, never gets boring. I think A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 is a great film and really quenched the thirst for those wanting more of Freddy Krueger.