A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 is a slasher horror film directed by Stephen Hopkins. The plot continues to follow new dream warrior Alice (Lisa Wilcox), as she once again has to fight Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), who has returned from the dead this time using Alice’s unborn babies dreams as a gateway back into our world.
This is by far the strangest nightmare yet, there is a lot of out there ideas that range from the goofy to the downright disturbed. Though Hopkins himself does not like this film, studio meddling once again, I think it has a place amongst the better trips to Elm street. I enjoyed the surreal feel to it and a lot of imagery was unsettling which I felt heightened the film.
Furthermore, the deeper dive into the origins of Freddy was interesting to see how it all began, the monster baby stuff not so much, but the rest of it was intriguing. That said, I found the focus on Alice’s baby, who is or isn’t Freddy’s son? Was bad, I did not care about this future character that is barley set up at all and just appears.
The deaths were a lot of fun, I thought the dinner party kill and the comic book esque kill were probably the best of the bunch, though they all have an entertaining campiness to them that makes them so fun to watch.
Overall, though some of the ideas were poorly thought out, baby Freddy springs to mind, I think because of the clear vison and style this film feels better than a lot of the other instalments.
Pros.
The Kills
The focus on Freddy’s origins
The campy fun
The visuals
Cons
Jacob as a character
Zombie baby Freddy
3.5/5
Reviewed by Luke
