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

Genre

Horror

Director

Renny Harlin

Country

USA

Cast

Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Danny Hassel, Brooke Theiss, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Toy Newkirk, Rodney Eastman, Ken Sagoes, Nicholas Mele, Brooke Bundy

Storyline

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) returns to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman (Lisa Wilcox) who may know the way to defeat him for good.

Opinion

A lot of franchises follow a pattern, they alternate good films to awful ones, and because the first film of this franchise was great, the second was rubbish and the third was good I should have seen this coming. Instead, I was expecting a good or at least decent entry. 

Unfortuntately "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master" is anything but good or decent. Rather is it a pointless, non scary sequel that seems more like a silly comedy than a horror.

While in "Dream Warriors" it was a good idea to reprise where the first film left so to eclipse the disastrous "Freddy's Revenge", this time is wasn't a smart move, mainly because this film doesn't even have a plot. It's just Freddy, once again come back from the dead, killing one-dimensional characters.

One of the biggest flaws is probably the filmmakers' choice to give Freddy more screen time, transforming him from the dreaded man haunting young people he was to a stupid joker. In fact, bad jokes (and terrible killings) are all that Freddy is fed with.

Another things this film is lacking is a good cast. Definitely not as good as the previous ones - which included Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne -, the actors are terrible. I was wondering why Arquette didn't reprise her role, then I saw the film and understood.