MovieChat Forums > A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989) Discussion > What happened that made this one so awfu...

What happened that made this one so awful?


The fourth one is one of my favorites but this one is pretty much pure trash outside of a few moments. I actually think I may prefer Freddy's Dead over it considering I don't think the second half of Freddy's Dead is all that bad, this one goes to hell after about 30 minutes. Here's my list of complaints:

- Awful characters outside of Alice and Dan
- Terrible writing
- Lame plot, I mean why is Freddy's mother all of a sudden back saying her body needed to be found? You would imagine she would have said that in part 3. Secondly, the baby thing was stupid. They were pulling anything they could out of their asses.
- Freddy's lines became overly cheesy in this one
- Dan shouldn't have died, at least not so early in the movie (his death was probably the best in this entry though)
- The vibe of the film just felt all wrong
- Subpar finale

I wonder how they went from making the great part four to this one.

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[deleted]

Lmao at reason #1! They could have done a more mature movie without having Alice become pregnant, I still can't get over how horrible the plot of this one was. I notice movies that go through a lot of rewrites tend to be pretty disappointing. So that makes sense. I guess they were pumping them out quickly just for money at this point, so quality got put on the back burner.

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[deleted]

The Freddy backstory was too heavy handed and trying to merge it with Alice's unborn baby plot was too convoluted.

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Let's not forget the ending where the writers just threw up their hands and had the teens tell Freddy's mom on him.

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[deleted]

They were still pretending to be horror and tried to spice up the horror by bring in a Gothic element into a made for Lifetime drama and it sucked when a kill wasnt taking place

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[deleted]

Ultimately, I think it's because it was so rushed to be made. I think there is a good movie hidden in here. There are some original ideas, and cool set pieces. But the movie itself came out less than a year after its predecessor, much like the also-flawed Part 2. Comparatively, Dream Warriors took 16 months to make and Dream Master took 18. Had they given Dream Child more time to polish, it might have been on their level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOQbX5YpcdE&feature=youtu.be

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Part 5, awful?!? No way. -- Parts 6 & Freddy vs Jason? Sure, but not part 5.

-Part 5 had some of the most imaginative production design of the entire series.
-The makeup & special effects were insanely good. It still holds up quite well in this day & age.
-It had one great set piece after another.
-Dan's early death was a shock. So, I actually liked that.

-W/ all that said, adding Freddy's mom back into the mix was unnecessary. The idea was that Freddy needed Alice to exist. Since Alice could control her dreams, that kept Freddy at bay. So, he preyed upon her unborn baby's dreams instead. The final confrontation w/ Freddy's mom didn't make sense, since either Alice or Jacob should've been the ones to defeat Freddy.

I get why some people don't like Part 5 since it has a much more downbeat tone. Personally, for me, it ranks somewhere in the middle. I like Parts 1,2 & 4 more so. After that.... 5,7,3,6 and Freddy vs Jason.

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To answer your question The only good character was alice an her father dan was simply dan he was still under developed mark was all right an the rest were there freddys lines were chessier here but that wasnt the problem it was the fact he had none stop one liners an the fact this film is so dark an gothic his one liners dont fit The plot is actually one of the most inventive of the franchise an un born babies really do dream the plot is simply hurt because theres not enough kills so the film is slower an since theres not enough kills it focuses on the drama making it feel like a drama an not a slasher film which is a problem freddys death was to much like part four an it was like that because this film was rushed also part four wasnt amazing it was a good sequel but not great this one is simply ok its biggest problems is the gothic tone not mixing with jokey freddy an not enough kills alice needed two more friends an if we had two more big deaths to keep the pace this film would be better as is its ok lol

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There are too many reasons, really. But I enjoy it, because it's the last Nightmare on Elm Street film that recognizably feels like a Nightmare movie. Freddy Dead is a tonally confused, inept abortion, Wes Craven's New Nightmare is great, but it's an exercise in post-modern filmmaking, Freddy Vs. Jason is just a cynical cash-in (we're clearly not meant to take the teen protagonists and their journey seriously, unlike the early Elm Street movies).

*That godawful remake does not count

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