A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Synopsis:

The film picks right up where A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors left off. The last surviving Elm Street teens believe that Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund, The Mangler) is dead for good. However, when one of the teenagers begins having nightmares (again!), she’s convinced that Krueger is back and she is right!

Reaction & Thoughts:

“You shouldn’t have buried me. I’m not dead.”

This is where the rot set in — the franchise never quite recovered from this sequel. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) had a perfect ending and this follow-up seems totally unnecessary.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, written by Brian Helgeland and Scott Pierce and directed by Renny Harlin (The Long Kiss Goodnight), offers nothing new, relying on a proven formula that begins to look so tired. More important, Krueger is no longer the vicious killer of the first three movies — he has been turned into a wisecracking villain straight out of Sesame Street, not Elm Street.

The level of grotesqueness is high, but the suspense is very low. There is an obvious attempt to outdo the murder sequences from previous installments. Some of the visual effects are quite good. But the production design, as elaborate as it is, looks a bit cheesy. Robert Englund’s shameless scenery chewing only helps accentuate the flat storyline — in all fairness to the actor, the script is pretty lame.

Englund is at the very least a commanding presence, but the same thing can’t be said of the rest of the cast. The young actors are average at best.

To make matters worse, Patricia Arquette (Boyhood), who played Kristen in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, couldn’t reprise her role. The part went to newcomer Tuesday Knight, who is decidedly less talented than Arquette. Thankfully, Knight exits the story quickly and Lisa Wilcox (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures) takes over the lead, who is a (slightly) better heroine than Knight.

Conclusions & Final Thoughts:

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is uneven and hardly worth anyone’s time. It’s a sub-par sequel for the most part, with a humorous-silly villain that makes the movie even less interesting. Color, 99 minutes, Rated R.

Followed by A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)