The Dream Master picks up right where The Dream Warriors left off. Freddy is resurrected from his grave in hallowed ground by a dog peeing fire on it. Who knew dog pee was the antidote to holy water. The dog then high tails it, leaving its owner to face Freddy. Man's best friend indeed. At any rate, Freddy is alive again and back to his nasty old tricks.
First he does away with the remainders of the obnoxious cast of the previous film (sans Langenkamp), then he is off to try his luck with a new batch of teens including a female Urkel, a vacant looking jock, a douche bag with a Corey Hart haircut, and others.
But one of the teens, Alice, has the ability to absorb the special talents and abilities of Freddy's victims which she can later combine and use against him thereby becoming the dream master.
This sequel gave me a bad feeling from the moment the opening credits rolled to the sounds of crappy 1980's pop music which, by the way, persisted through the remainder of the film. Freddy remains but a mere parody of his originally frightening self and his tendency towards hanging around making bad jokes rather than doing scary shit has only increased in this fourth instalment.
Furthermore, while all the sequels thus far have been significantly toned down in terms of gore and horror compared with the original, this one feels like the worst one yet. There are two kill scenes which are the exceptions to the rule and are just bizarre and nasty, but this fails to make up for the rest of the film. "Why!?!?!" one might cry out in consternation. Well, probably because Dream Warriors grossed almost twice what the original did and this film did even better. Someone was obviously following the dollar signs and not the screams.
Naturally it all ends with a scene that would lead one to believe that perhaps Freddy is really dead and gone this time. With four more sequels to go... not even close.
1.5 mantis legs out of 5
Rated R: contains violence/gore, frightening scenes, nudity, language.
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