The Dream Master is the most perfunctory, pointless entry in the franchise yet, a dull, weakly-executed movie that goes through the motions without bringing much new to the table. At this point, we know the drill: the kids will be struck by night terrors, the adults will pay little mind to their children, and Freddy will go about his dastardly mission with military precision. Director Renny Harlin displays little of the panache he’d later bring to such high-octane spectacles as Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, and the result isn’t just formulaic — it’s dull.
The film picks up where Dream Warriors left off. Kristen Parker (now played by Tuesday Knight) has survived Freddy, but she’s begun to have nightmares again. Her ability to pull others into her dreams becomes a liability, and now Freddy has found a whole new group of kids to terrorize — which is fortunate for him, since he’s dispatched virtually every child of his killers. Soon, he’s bedeviling Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox) who tries to fight back by taking control of her dreams.
The Nightmare movies aren’t particularly heavy on character development, but we need something from our protagonists in order to stay emotionally invested. Unfortunately, this is the weakest group of heroes/victims yet. Even the special effects are duller this time out: aside from one character’s queasy transformation into a cockroach (perhaps the least Kafkaesque metamorphosis of its kind in the history of arts and letters) and the flesh-ripping finale, most of the scares come and go like clockwork. Plus, by this point, you’d think the townsfolk would listen when dozens of teens recount similar tales of nighttime terror (and are later killed in the most gruesome possible ways), but no, virtually everyone in this movie tries to tell our beleaguered heroes that they should just get some rest. (In terms of fictional 1980s communities, only Cabot Cove, ME — home to Murder, She Wrote‘s Jessica Fletcher — is comparable to Springwood in terms of both body count and an oblivious populace.)
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The Dream Master has another big problem: Freddy’s been converted from a terrifying bogeyman into Joey Bishop with knives. His goofy punchlines have become stale and predictable — when one character was doing bench presses, I was counting the seconds until Freddy appeared and quipped, “No pain, no gain!”
So it’s here that I’ll pause and pull back for a moment. One of the things that I hoped to gain from this project was a deeper understanding of the appeal of slasher movies. It’s a subgenre I’ve tended to avoid as a moviegoer, since I prefer the implied threat of violence over the graphic depiction of blood and guts, and I rarely find myself rooting for, or enjoying the company of, said mad killers. However, the first entry in some of these franchises often taps into some dark, primal fear that we all share. When I first saw Halloween, for example, I was thrilled by its heightened tension and goofy humor — and I was relieved by its relative absence of blood. Likewise, I expected The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to turn my stomach, but what drew me in was the film’s sense of desolate, foreboding atmosphere.
Still, for me, Psycho remains the most potent of horror films for a number of reasons. One of the most important, however, is the way that Hitchcock is able to make the audience sympathize with, and in some cases actively root for — Norman Bates. Though he may be the prototype for the Michael Myerses and Jason Voorheeses that followed, he’s ultimately the victim of a terrible madness — one that he fights but can’t ultimately control. Do Nightmare fans have the same empathy for the physically repulsive, child-killing Freddy Krueger?
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To find out, I decided to talk with some film critics who have followed the Nightmare series from the beginning.
Scott Weinberg writes for Cinematical and Fear.net, along with oodles of other sites (in the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that he’s a former contributor to Rotten Tomatoes). He saw the first Nightmare on Elm Street when he was in middle school, and was immediately taken by its creepy menace and haunting premise — something he feels many contemporary viewers miss.
“I grew up with these characters, which is interesting because I think a lot of people come to this series as grown-ups looking down at the characters,” he said. “‘Like, “Oh, those silly teenagers, their teenage fears are manifested in a bogeyman.’ But I was watching from a kids’ perspective, so I was watching it as, ‘Wow, older people have nightmares too.’ It seems to tap into that [fear]: no matter who you are, it’s late at night, it’s dark, and you’re in bed — everyone feels a little vulnerable.”
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Staci Layne Wilson, an online-based critic who’s written for such horror sites as Dread Central and Horror.com, said she first saw A Nightmare on Elm Street when she was working in a video store. Patrons raved about the film, and when Wilson finally watched it, she knew she had seen something special.
“I was really blown away by it, because there was nothing like it before,” she said. “What I loved about it was that it had a totally different kind of character. He was nothing like Jason or Michael Myers. He was more witty and intelligent. And it really did approximate the late 1960s–early 1970s art film with the nightmare sequences. Wes Craven has a very full background in fine art.”
If the series devolved into camp, it wasn’t evident from the first installment, Wilson said.
“The first movie wasn’t so funny,” she said. “It was taken more seriously.”
Weinberg may have loved Freddy at first, but he said he grew disenchanted by the series’ jokey tone.
“As a kid, I liked them all,” he said. “But deep down, I knew all the other ones were almost comedies after the first one. Now, as a quote-unquote grownup film critic — and still a huge horror fan — each of the sequels has their limited appeal, but they’re all surface level. The series became known for Freddy’s quips and really creative, gruesome set pieces. There are so many elaborate, crazy kills, and you realized that that was all they were really focusing on. The story was almost an afterthought. I hate to sound like an old fogey about it, but I really do think, for the most part, the sequels are pretty much just junk. Fun junk, but junk. It’s kind of a shame. I would have liked to have seen where they could have gone if they kept Freddy dark and scary.”
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But if you keep these characters dark and scary, I asked, why do audiences come back for more?
“If you look at the title of the series,” Wilson said, “it’s like it’s right there on your block. Freddy comes to you. There’s something inherently frightening about the vulnerability of sleep. You need it. You have to have it. I think that’s an interesting twist. The setups are really interesting, and it’s fun to see what Freddy he does throughout the series.”
“We like to put some kind of face on our fears,” Weinberg said. “That face could be a hockey mask, or it could be Freddy’s burned face. And then once they don’t scare us anymore, then we like to mock them. And Freddy turning into a jokester, it’s a slap to horror, because it’s like, ‘We’re really not interested in scaring you. No matter how gross and disturbing this kill or this character might be, we’re constantly elbowing you in the ribs.'”
Wilson agrees that the series has its bumpy entries, but she also noted that the Nightmare movies offer a chance to see talented writers and directors working within the framework of a Freddy movie.
“Each time you see another one, you keep thinking, ‘Well, it’s gonna be good….'” She said with a chuckle. “It seemed to be a case of diminishing returns with most of these. But there are some different ones throughout the series by directors who later went on to do some good things, and you can see their stamps on these films.”
If one thing is consistent about the Nightmare movies, Wilson said, it’s that they tend to avoid some of the questionable violence against women that is rampant in the slasher genre.
“Women have always been used as the victims in horror films from the beginning,” she said. “You can go way, way back to Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I think Freddy is a pretty equal-opportunity slasher. There’s just as many men as there are women being killed in these things, and usually it’s the final girl who emerges as the hero and beats Freddy, so I don’t really find them to be misogynistic.”
And if he’s become disenchanted with Freddy, Weinberg said he’s still a little curious about each new entry.
“You want to see what new angle they’re gonna take this time,” he said.
Hopefully, the next installment — A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5: The Dream Child — will be more inspired than its predecessor. Check back tomorrow for more Freddy!
Schedule of Nightmares:
