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

Director: Stephan Hopkins

Writers: John Skipp, Craig Spector, Leslie Bohem

Composer: Jay Ferguson

Starring: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Danny Hassel, Erika Anderson, Nicholas Mele, Joe Seely, Valorie Armstrong, Burr DeBenning

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Roll Over Beethoven - It's Freddy's Fifth!

Plot: The pregnant Alice finds Freddy Krueger striking through the sleeping mind of her unborn child, hoping to be reborn into the real world.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Probably not.

I guess it was only a matter of time before one of these sequels wasn't good.  If there's one thing, though, that is consistent it's the special effects and the great kills.  But one or more of the kills in this one were just OK.  I really dug the comic book guy's death.  If for nothing else it was very creative.  His acting was definitely the weakest link but at least he had some neat moments as a drawing.  The story is alright, the acting was par for the course, the effects ranged from dodgy to great and the pacing was OK.  But I was borderline bored for most of it.  Was it the directing that was lackluster?  I don't think so.  I think it was the screenplay that needed some excitement injected into it.  I'm just going to assume that Freddy will always be there and you can't really kill him.  That'll explain a lot so the movies can keep coming and there's little need to explain how he comes back.  With that assumption, it's simply left up to the filmmakers to get creative and build a fun playground for which Freddy can stretch his legs and kill some teenage mofos.  That's it.  It just hit me.  Freddy feels less a part of the story and more like the boogeyman in this picture.  He needed to be more prominent.  While I dug getting a little of his backstory, he was a lot less involved and had fewer lines than the other films.  That settles it.  It's the screenplay that's lacking.  Case solved, Mr. Holmes.