Dead Silence (2007)

Director: James Wan

Writers: Leigh Whannell

James Wan

Tagline: You scream. You die.

Plot: A widower returns to his hometown to search for answers to his wife’s murder, which may be linked to the ghost of a murdered ventriloquist.

Cast: Ryan Kwanten – Jamie Ashen

Amber Valletta – Ella Ashen

Donnie Wahlberg – Det. Lipton

Michael Fairman – Henry Walker

Joan Heney – Marion Walker

Review:

Well, I’m back after a few month pause so now I can (finally) continue writing reviews. Today I’m going to review Dead Silence, directed by James Wan, who also directed the first Saw movie. According to these two movies, it seems James Wan likes to incorporate dolls in his work of art. Many people are naturally afraid of dolls so they could find this movie to be genuinely scary. Besides dolls, Dead Silence also features ghosts and few nice kills. Although all of this sounds promising, Dead Silence is just your another average popcorn horror flick – which is a huge disappointment…

So anyways, this guy, Jamie Ashen, finds a mysterious package in front of his doorstep which contains a ventriloquist doll named Billy. Jamie leaves Billy with his wife Lisa, while he goes out to buy some dinner. Unfortunately for Lisa, she gets brutally killed and Jamie is taken to the police as a prime suspect – but he suspects the doll did the morbid deed. Very early in the movie, we can see a standard horror “jump scare” scene followed by great effects of a victim’s deformed face. From this point of the movie (and to the very end) my thoughts were pretty mixed up. On one hand the atmosphere wasn’t bed at all although the color that dominated through out the whole movie was “dark blue” (another irritating cliche in modern horror movies – they have to be dark blue). And on the other hand all the characters seemed pretty undeveloped, wooden and sometimes even annoying. Furthermore, as the movie progresses on, we are being introduced with more and more, often stupid and silly, informations and elements of the plot. It’s like the scriptwriters could not focus on a single plot, but had to bring up something new every now and then. In conclusion, all of this collides into one huge ending filled with all of this random shit (I couldn’t find a more proper word to describe it). The thing that saves Dead Silence from a total disaster is a very interesting twist that happens in the very last minute of the movie. But despite being great, the twist makes the whole movie seem pretty much pointless and it may leave you somewhat unsatisfied.

But, of course, if you are new to the horror genre or just a sucker for horror movies with dolls and ghost you’ll be more than satisfied with Dead Silence. However, outside those boundaries, Dead Silence offers nothing new and is just another slightly predictable, shallow and simple modern horror movie filled with uninteresting and cliched characters. Therefore, I think it’s better to avoid watching Dead Silence and watch something else instead.

My Rating: 5/10… A very strange combination of dolls and ghosts. I assume this is the kind of movie you either love or hate. Me? I didn’t like it all.

L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970)

Director: Dario Argento

Writers: Dario Argento

Fredric Brown

Tagline: A stunning portrait in psycho-terror!

Plot: A writer is stalked by a serial killer after witnessing a murder attempt on one woman’s life.

Cast: Tony Musante – Sam Dalmas

Suzy Kendall – Julia

Enrico Maria Salerno – Inspector Morosini

Eva Renzi – Monica Ranieri

Umberto Raho – Alberto Ranieri

Review:

L’uccelo dalle piume di cristallo (or The Bird with the Crystal Plummage as it’s translated in English) is the directing debut of one of the most interesting Horror directors, Dario Argento. It is also the first part of his “animal trilogy” (the other 2 movies are Il Gatto a Nove Code (1971) – The Cat o’ Nine Tails and 4 Mosche di Velluto Grigio (1971) – The Four Velvet Flies). Even very early in his carrier Argento showed a natural talent for directing horror movies so The Bird with the Crystal Plumage didn’t disappoint me at all.

The movie’s plot is a simple “Argentian” story. It is about a man who witnesses a murder attempt and now is being stalked by a serial killer. Actually, many elements you see during this movie are also present in Argento’s later masterpiece, Profondo Rosso. In both movies the protagonist is an artist, who is from (or has been to) America, who witnessed a murder/murder attempt and is trying to recall clues from his memory, in both movies there is a serial killer involved in the whole story and most important of all, the twist at the end of both movies is very similar. So if you watched any of those two first, you could find the second one to be a little “predictable”. But don’t let that back you off! Both Profondo Rosso and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage are very amusing experiences you should check out furthermore if you haven’t already.

So besides some elements I have seen before, Argento’s directing debut offers much more. First of all, it has a very decent and slightly depressive atmosphere which was accomplished by nice luminance and amazing camera angles. Some of the best camera angles from the movie were the killer’s point of view (one of Argento’s trademarks) and the point of view of a man falling down the building (which was accomplished by actually throwing the camera down the building :] ).What I particularly liked in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was some intelligent humor now and then, a nice bonus to the movie’s overall feeling. The kills were also done very well, especially the first murder attempt which was the highlight of the movie. The interesting soundtrack, composed by Ennio Morricone, is worth mentioning too. It excellently fits the 70s Italian horror atmosphere.

Argento put in his first movie many interesting but, unfortunately, undeveloped characters played by amateur actors. Because of this I think the movie could have been even better, if it wasn’t Dario’s directing debut and if he had a bigger budget, due to the fact it had a big potential. So the bad acting and character development might be The Bird with the Crystal Plummage’s biggest flaws. Yeah, I also have to mention some parts of the movie seemed a little unnecessary and pointless (like when our protagonist is being chased by a man with the yellow jacket who is trying to kill him) but that’s not that huge of a deal. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is far from being a classic but it surely is above average. You should give it a watch if you are interested in horror/thriller movies and especially Dario Argento.

My Rating: 7/10… Argento’s directing debut turned out to be a very good experience.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: Wes Craven

Ulla Isaksson

Tagline: To avoid fainting, keep repeating “It’s only a movie…It’s only a movie…”

Plot: A pair of teenage girls are headed to a rock concert for one’s birthday. While trying to score marijuana in the city, the girls are kidnapped by a gang of psychotic convicts.

Cast: Sandra Peabody – Mari Collingwood

Lucy Grantham – Phyllis Stone

David Hess – Krug Stillo

Fred J. Lincoln – Fred ‘Weasel’ Podowski

Jeramie Rain – Sadie

Review:

The Debut Week continues and the next movie to be reviewed is Wes Craven’s directing debut, The Last House on the Left. When this movie was released it spawned a lot of controversy because of its brutal and often explicit scenes. Furthermore, Last House on the Left easily gained a cult status over the years due to the fact it literally spawned many more movies with similar thematics. Even today a great number of people consider it to be a genre breaking classic. Despite all the fame that surrounds this movie, I found it to be barely watchable.

The main problem is that Wes Craven made a very simple and naive story with no real character development or whatsoever. The characters are very much one dimensional with stupidly predictable dialogues. Actually, the whole script writing seems a little awkward. Some parts of the movie were really overdone and overreacted like when the bad guys are talking about popular serial killers (I mean, come on…like that is a character development – it was just ridiculous) while the other parts  seemed so naive and childish – for an example;  the scene where those 2 girls meet the bad guys who torture them afterwards. So you may conclude that The Last House on the Left is a very bipolar movie with parts which are either overdone or naive. So this kind of scriptwriting, directing and editing makes the movie very hard (and boring) to watch. Unfortunately, that’s not all of it. In the middle of movie Craven put a “comedy” scene, with 2 cops and a truck full of chickens, which was just awful and painful. I think that could may be the worst scene from any movie I’ve seen lately. Furthermore, the soundtrack is just ridiculous, it’s like it was stolen from a Looney Toons cartoon. I am also disappointed with the acting, I think it could have been at least slightly better because most of it consisted of pure overreacting which was pointless.

The only positive thing about Last House on the Left was the impact it had on horror movie industry. Wes Craven dared to make a step further in filmmaking while adding all those often controversial scenes. Visually, the movie could be considered a several years ahead of its time so I give kudos to Craven for that. I was very surprised to see some scenes in the movie but, unfortunately, they couldn’t change my overall opinion. In conclusion, The Last House on the Left is all about weak scriptwriting, poor directing and editing, awful acting and soundtrack, some nice scenes and a huge “hype” surrounding it. Craven definitely had better days in his carrier.

My Rating: 3/10… Don’t have high hopes for this movie because if you do, you could find yourself to be very disappointed.

Btw, many people say that the remake is much better than the original. That says a lot about Wes Craven’s directing debut.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Director: George A. Romero

Writers: John A. Russo

George A. Romero

Tagline: Pits the dead against the living in a struggle for survival!

Plot: A group of people hide from bloodthirsty zombies in a farmhouse.

Cast: Duane Jones – Ben

Judith O’Dea – Barbra

Karl Hardman – Harry

Marilyn Eastman – Helen

Keith Wayne – Tom

Review:

Now that I am back, after being away for some time, we can finally start with our Debut Week. We start this event with Night of the Living Dead, the directing debut of THE granddaddy of zombie movies, George Andrew Romero. As you may or not know, this was the first movie that turned zombies into flesh eating, slow moving masses as we know them today. Because of this (and many more things) Night of the Living Dead easily became a cult movie in the horror genre over the years. As for myself, I would dare to say this is my favourite movie made by Romero and one of my favourite black and white movies.

Night of the Living Dead was also released in color although I haven’t seen that version yet but, honestly, I don’t think that I will. The black and white colors simply fit the movie’s atmosphere perfectly and I don’t see why change something like that. Besides the tingling and depressive black and white atmosphere based mainly on emotions like helplessness and frustration, the movie offers a simple but effective script writing. The plot resolves around a group of strangers stuck in a farmhouse which is being attacked by zombies (like we haven’t seen that before) but this time is different, it is actually well written. The characters are developed enough (and what I particularly liked is that neither one character is entirely good or entirely bad; all of them have their flaws and virtues which gives the movie a whole new “realistic” dimension – even our main hero, Ben, is capable of hitting a woman and shooting another man) and the dialogues are strong and believable. The movie is also full with strange social commentary, mainly on the topic of racism but according to imdb (and the filmmakers) that was never intended. The social commentary that I have seen was that the human race is its own worst enemy, as seen in many scenes.

Even over 40 years later, Night of the Living Dead still doesn’t fail to scare, disturb or shock its viewers. It is full of parts that jut won’t leave you disinterested or apathetic. Even the movie’s ending is extremely shocking but I won’t spoil it out in case you haven’t seen it yet. The zombie make up is also very good for it’s time and the movie offers one of the most memorable zombies ever, The Cemetery Zombie. And all of this is followed by a surprisingly good soundtrack. Actually, the only flaw in this movie could be the acting which is far from perfect but still more than watchable. All in all, Night of the Living Dead, Romero’s directing debut, is an extremely good, classic and most of all genre breaking horror movie which I highly recommend to everyone.

My Rating: 10/10… An instant favourite and classic! Romero had a pretty strong start in his carrier with this movie.

Btw, this is my 50th review! Thank you all for reading me out regulary! More reviews are coming soon. : )

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Director: Samuel Bayer

Writers: Wesley Strick

Eric Heisserer

Tagline: Never Sleep Again

Plot: A re-imagining of the horror icon Freddy Krueger, a serial-killer who wields a glove with four blades embedded in the fingers and kills people in their dreams, resulting in their real death in reality.

Cast: Jackie Earle Haley – Freddy Krueger

Kyle Gallner – Quentin Smith

Rooney Mara – Nancy Holbrook

Katie Cassidy – Kris Fowles

Thomas Dekker – Jesse Braun

Review:

It’s time to finish our Nightmare on Elm Street week (although it lasted much longer than a week) with a review that spawned this idea. The remake of the original Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) recevied pretty mixed reviews from both critics and viewers. I didn’t like it at all due to its shallowness and unoriginality, which will be explained shortly. I think you are all familiar with the movie’s plot and concept so I don’t have to further introduce it.

It is important to say that remake is very similar to Freddy vs Jason (and that definitely isn’t a good thing) so it seriously lacks the 80s atmosphere, which was one of the best things in the original. Because of this, the movie looks too modern; I can’t seem to find any reason why was this movie even made besides money and “amazing” special effects.  So it’s more than obvious that this remake is clearly unnecessary. In the introduction I said that A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) is shallow and unoriginal. What I meant by that is that offers nothing new, all of this was seen somewhere before. The several good scenes in the movie have been shamelessly copy/pasted from the original, and the rest of it was just awful. I don’t know why would anyone chose to watch the remake over the original, the cult parts of both movies are almost the same but the original also offers much more like better character development, better scriptwriting and better atmosphere. But if you do decide to watch it be ready for an unintentional laugh or two because, as it can be seen in the trailer, the remake is full with extremely cheesy dialogue like: -Oh god!- -No, just me.-; this is also similar to Freddy vs Jason. I think you are all wondering whether Jackie Earle Haley was a good replacement for Robert Englund in his role as Freddy. And the answer is: No, he wasn’t. I don’t have anything against Haley’s acting skills (I liked him in Watchmen) but the whole Freddy concept was destroyed because he was given these stupid /cheesy one liners and new looks, which were also awful and made him look like an alien. In addition to that his background was slightly changed…to worse.  So Haley isn’t good as Englund but I think that’s really not his fault. The rest of the cast are simply awful in their roles, most of them are either too static or too unbelievable, especially Rooney Mara who is a very bad choice for the role of Nancy – she isn’t special in any way, a very very bad choice for the final girl. There isn’t left much to say about this remake. All in all, it is utterly bad, even Freddy vs Jason is a slightly better movie.

It seems to me that A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) had absolutely no potential at all. It was “doomed” from the second someone decided to make it. A lot of fans were spectical with a good reason because it is blasphemous to turn a cult movie into something like this. Almost every aspect of this remake is horrible besides the “stolen” scenes and some kills (unfortunately, the kills are good in every NoES movie, besides maybe Freddy’s revenge, so that doesn’t make this remake anything special). It is just your typical “wannabe mainstream” horror movie.

My Rating: 3/10… Don’t watch it! It is easily one of the worst movies from the Nightmare on Elm Street series.

Freddy vs Jason (2003)

Director: Ronny Yu

Writers: Wes Craven

Victor Miller

Damian Shannon

Mark Swift

Tagline: The “Slicer”…The “Dicer”…And This Time, They’re Not Any “Nicer”!

Plot: Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees return to terrorize the teenage population. Except this time, they’re out to get each other, too.

Cast: Robert Englund – Freddy Krueger

Ken Kirzinger – Jason Voorhees

Monica Keena – Lori Campbell

Jason Ritter – Will Rollins

Kelly Rowland – Kia Waterson

Review:

A movie like Freddy vs Jason doesn’t really need a special introduction. By combining those 2 popular horror icons,  it quickly managed to achieve a cult status among the followers of both franchises.  Although I’m not a big fan of Jason or “vs” films, I decided to give it a watch. The results were horrible, Freddy vs Jason, despite all its potential, was a complete disaster. I think most of you are familiar with the movie’s plot but I’ll tell it anyways. The townsfolk of Springwood don’t fear Freddy anymore, they managed to erase all evidence about his existence so he can’t haunt the dreams of their children. However, even that can’t stop Freddy and he somehow finds/sends Jason to pay Springwood a visit so people could remember Krueger once more. But, after some time, they start to fight each other over few kills.

It is remarkable how almost every aspect of Freddy vs Jason is awful. First of all, Ronny Yu didn’t show any directing skills. As a result the movie is full of strange, unwatchable camera angles and weird luminance, which I didn’t particulary like (that neon blue lighting was really over the top). Secondly, the acting was horrible, I want to know who hired those actors due to the fact that even their appearance killed every decent moment the movie could have offered. The acting in Freddy vs Jason was even more terrible than the acting in later Nightmare on Elm Street sequels (and that is hard to top). Furthermore, the scriptwriting was possibly the worst I’ve seen in my entire life. Besides the plot summary, which does sound stupid by itself, Freddy vs Jason offers plenty more stupid things: funny and predictable dialogues full of cliche (I giggled during most of them), standard characters found in slasher movies (the lead female character who is still a virgin despite being smart and cute, her dream boy, her promiscuouse best friend, the geek, the stoner..), unexplained fears/motives/goals, random characters that suddenly appear/disappear, unimportant scenes… the list goes on and on. Moreover, the lead female character cries/whines/screams in most of the scenes where she appears. That was very…irritating. Actually, the whole concept of the movie seemed somehow wrong, Freddy vs Jason could have really been better. Even Freddy’s character couldn’t have saved the movie from a complete failure that it is now. His persona and sense of humor changed a bit, he wasn’t so likeable/funny as he used to be in NoES movies.

It isn’t hard to conclude that Freddy vs Jason is a mindless film that focuses mainly on action sequences and kills done by our “heroes”. This aspect of the movie satisfies me a lot since the number of kills is a great one and both Freddy and Jason don”t spare each other in their fights. It was nice to see both of them in a single movie, despite how bad that movie actually was. I would recommend Freddy vs Jason only to people who are fans of either franchise and even then they might not like it.

Btw, Freddy > Jason

My Rating: 3/10… Everything sucks except the action sequences. It’s not worth your time.

New Nightmare (1994)

Director: Wes Craven

Writer: Wes Craven

Tagline: This time, staying awake won’t save you.

Plot: A demonic force has chosen Freddy Krueger as its portal to the real world. Can Heather play the part of Nancy one last time and trap the evil trying to enter our world?

Cast: Robert Englund – Himself / Freddy Krueger

Heather Langenkamp – Herself / Nancy Thompson

Miko Hughes – Dylan Porter

David Newsom – Chase Porter

Tracy Middendorf – Julie

Review:

I was very interested in seeing New Nightmare because, as you may know, it is the only movie from the series, besides the first one, to be directed by Wes Craven. I was told that it was one of the best sequels in the whole series and that it is almost as scary as the first one. Well, those stories couldn’t be more wrong because New Nightmare came as a horrible disappointment. I, personally, find Wes Craven responsible for screwing it up so badly. This time, Freddy enters real world to haunt the dreams of actress Heath Langenkamp who now has to reprise the role of Nancy that made her popular.

In theory this plot synopsis may work perfectly (actually, I find it to be a good idea) but in practice, mister Craven made a too complex story. It is full of unnecessary scenes, parts that make no sense and plot holes. New Nightmare is, basically, a movie inside a movie, and was made a little too complicated so it can easily confuse the average viewer. Besides that, I think that Wes Craven was under a huge influence of The Shining (1980) when he wrote the script because influences are more than obvious: a disturbed child “apprehending” evil, the child having “episodes”, a similar mother – son relationship. While all those elements work perfectly in a horror classic like The Shining, they are completely useless in a movie from A Nightmare on Elm Street series. I think Craven put this child, Dylan, in the script to gain some dramatic and horror atmosphere (as all horror elements are somehow revolving around him), which turns out to be completely ridiculous. I suppose that the movie would have been much better without his irritating (and useless) character. It’s like Craven used his character just because he wanted to make another movie from Nightmare on Elm Street series, which would break into mainstream. Moreover, New Nightmare is the longest movie from the whole series, it lasts about 2 hours. Because of its “surprising” length it can get very boring from time to time due to the shallow script writing. Freddy’s personality also changed – he became more evil, dark and sinister with a new face and glove that make him look stupid. He still uses his one liners that are trying to sound funny but, in a movie like this, they just seem kinda overused. Number of kills in New Nightmare is really small and they are not original anymore like in previous sequels.

Maybe the only thing I enjoyed in New Nightmare was seeing the cast from the original Nightmare on one place. However, I really wanted Robert Englund to have more cameo time without his mask on but, unfortunately, he wasn’t a really important character. I fear there are no positive things to say about New Nightmare besides that. Al though I think this movie could have been much better I still prefer it over Freddy’s Revenge and Freddy’s Dead.

My Rating: 4/10… New Nightmare had much potential but it turned out to be one of the worst movies from the series.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Director: Rachel Talalay

Writers: Wes Craven

Rachel Talalay

Michael De Luca

Tagline: They saved the best for last.

Plot: Freddy Krueger returns once again to haunt both the dreams of his daughter and Springwood’s last surviving teenager.

Cast: Robert Englund – Freddy Krueger

Lisa Zane – Maggie Burroughs

Shon Greenblatt – John Doe

Lezlie Deane – Tracy

Ricky Dean Logan – Carlos

Review:

After reviewing The Dream Child few days ago, it is time for the next movie from the Nightmare on Elm Street series, Freddy’s Dead. This is the only movie from the whole series to be directed by a female director, Rachel Talalay, and, unfortunately for her, the movie is painful to watch. When the movie was released (1991) its plot was set in the near future, 1999 to be more specific. So “in the future” Freddy had killed all Springwood teenagers but one guy and now his new goal is to use his daughter to get more victims. However, in the end she kills him by bringing him to the real world and destroying him with a pipe bomb. The movie’s title is Freddy’s Dead, therefore I didn’t spoil anything important, the ending was pretty much obvious.

As you may conclude, the movie’s first problem is its title. It simply gives out everything important what will happen in the movie and leaves us with no tense, no twists and no interesting parts – the movie didn’t even start and it was already boring. Yes, I know that Freddy was defeated in almost every other movie too but this time is greatly different. Freddy’s Dead was supposed to be “The Final Nightmare” and an “end” to one of the greatest villains ever, although few reboots did occur after that. I think the goal of the stupid title was to bring as much box office money as possible (it made $12,966,525 in its opening weekend). In addition to the movie’s title, the script writing is horrible. It absolutely has no point and its full of cheesy dialogues, situations and characters – you should really see it for yourself. Furthermore, there are only few kills during the movie, which were poor. They are not awful but they can’t be compared to the ones from other movies due to the fact they aren’t so interesting and fun anymore. Freddy’s concept also changed a little, he is not the ultimate dream master anymore but a lesser demon controlled by the greater ones who gave him eternal life or something like that. Yawn. Now you can see how ridiculous the script writing really is.

The only thing I liked about Freddy’s Dead is that we find out more about Freddy’s background. Through some flashbacks you can see his childhood, growing up and family life so you can expect some scenes where Robert Englund isn’t wearing his mask. Ironically, those scenes were the most interesting ones in the whole movie. Towards the end, the writers even wanted us to feel sympathy for Freddy but those parts were so stupidly done that I almost threw up. There is nothing much to say about Freddy’s Dead anymore except don’t see it all costs, it is one of the worst movie in the series.

My Rating: 3/10… It is painful to watch. Freddy’s Dead is almost as bad as Freddy’s Revenge.

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

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Writers: Wes Craven

John Skipp

Craig Spector

Leslie Bohem

Tagline: It’s A Boy!

Plot: Alice, having survived the previous installment of the Nightmare series, finds the deadly dreams of Freddy Krueger starting once again…

Cast: Robert Englund – Freddy Krueger / Featured Maniac

Lisa Wilcox – Alice Johnson

Kelly Jo Minter – Yvonne

Danny Hassel – Dan Jordan

Erika Anderson – Greta Gibson

Review:

I’m sorry for being absent again this past few days. But now I’m back with the review of the Dream Child, the 5th movie from the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Freddy is revived and back again to haunt the dreams of Springewood teenagers. Now he uses Alice’s unborn baby to get to “fresh meat”. Despite this plot summary, which may sound stupid and dull, I found Dream Child to be an ok, watchable movie.

When I started watching it, I thought to myself that it could be the best sequel in the NoES series so far. It begins with one of Alice’s dreams, which was very creepy and disturbing. In it we see how Amanda Krueger, Freddy’s mother, was overwhelmed by 100 maniacs in the asylum where she worked. Robert Englund even had an awesome cameo in those scenes as one of the maniacs.  After that, in another dream, we see more disturbing scenes like Amanda giving birth to Freddy. That second dream somehow revives him and he is back again. This is what Nightmare on Elm Street is all about. Twisted creepy scenes perfectly combined with dark humour. The movie managed to completely amaze me by then. After Dream Master (an ok movie which really lacked any kind of horror elements) Dream Child came to me like a breath of fresh air. This sequel also features some of the best murders in whole series. Freddy almost didn’t use his razor glove at all but killed his victims in all kinds of humorous and interesting ways. Unfortunately, there are only few deaths that occur during the movie. His “new style” had much more potential and shouldn’t have been wasted on few kills.

Even though it seems that Dream Child has only some minor flaws, it definitely isn’t a very good movie. It had a very strong and decent beginning but as soon as we meet our main characters, it all goes downhill. They are a bunch of one dimensional, undeveloped idiots full of cliches, which were quite annoying and boring to watch. And the worst of all, the character who annoyed me the most survived the whole movie. In addition to their shallow personalities, acting was awful. I know I can’t expect some special characters from a movie like The Dream Child but at least they could have been a bit less irritating – two previous parts from the series didn’t have problems like this. I have to say something about Alice’s son, Jacob. In some scenes his appearance helped create a creepy atmosphere but in other one he seemed completely useless…so I don’t know what to think of him. Besides that, as the time was passing by, the movie was getting worse and worse. Some scenes didn’t make sense at all,  the whole plot synopsis is bad and accomplishing some things seemed too easy (like finding out how to defeat Freddy and doing so). In conclusion, the movie suffers from a huge script writing problem. It is interesting how can a movie have such a good start and continue/finish being below average. All in all, I give it a same grade as I gave to The Dream Master.

My Rating: 5/10… Nice beginning but almost everything else sucks.

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

Director: Renny Harlin

Writers: Wes Craven

William Kotzwinkle

Brian Helgeland

Jim & Ken Wheat

Tagline: You shouldn’t have buried me, I’m not dead

Plot: Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman who may know the way to defeat him for good.

Cast: Lisa Wilcox – Alice Johnson

Andras Jones – Rick Johnson

Danny Hassel – Dan Jordan

Rodney Eastman – Joey Crusel

Tuesday Knight – Kristen Parker

Review:

Nightmare on Elm Street week continues with A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master! After being “put to rest” in the previous part, Freddy is back to kill the remaining Dream Warriors and some “fresh meat”. Our main female character in this one is Alice Johnson, a girl who comes from a troubled family and has problems with day dreaming. Alice, just like Kristen from Dream Warriors, has some special powers, which could help her kill Freddy.

Dream Master easily follows the direction in which Dream Warriors, as a movie, went. So this part is also full with hilarious quotes, Freddy’s funny one-liners and innovative kills. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think Dream Master has the greatest number of deaths in the whole series so far and all of them are surely the movie’s most memorable moments. I think it’s needless to say that Freddy lost his horror aspect entirely in this sequel. Now he rather looks like a stand up comedian, which isn’t bad at all because it depends on what do you expect from this movie. Similar to Dream Warriors, if you want to watch a serious horror, better skip Dream Master but if you are interested in watching a simply fun movie, you go for it. This sequel also offers much more amusing characters than the ones from it’s predecessor. Although character development is utterly bad, I couldn’t predict who would survive and who would die so some scenes and “twists” (if you can call them that way) were “shocking” to me.

Despite Dream Warriors had less interesting characters and many flaws, it still is a better movie than Dream Master. This one simply won’t entertain you enough if you’re not a Nightmare on Elm Street fan. It has an average story, bad acting, interesting kills and some funny moments and that’s it. Similar to the Dream Warriors, Dream Master had a script that had potential but failed in making it a more amusing movie, which would appeal to everyone. It’s very easy to compare them: they are pretty much the same because of all the similarities they have. Dream Warriors, however, made something new and innovative in the series. On the other hand Dream Master simply follows that formula. Furthermore, don’t expect anything special from Alice’s power, which I mentioned in the review’s introduction, they were just somehow useless. Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that the movie has a terrible ending. It is almost as bad as the one in Freddy’s Revenge, which left me really disappointed, and if it had been different I would have surely given Dream Master a better rating. While Dream Warriors was good from start to end, Dream Master had lot of ups and downs and generally it’s a worse movie than its predecessor.

My Rating: 5/10… Dream Warriors is slightly better. Better check that one out.