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The Big Picture
- Freddy Krueger’s creative and inventive kills in the Nightmare on Elm Street series are one of his defining characteristics and have become iconic.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is considered the weakest film in the franchise, with a low death toll, an overblown gothic atmosphere, and a ridiculous and offensive death scene.
- The portrayal of Greta and her death in ‘The Dream Child’ defies standards of decency, with the movie treating her eating disorder as a joke and lacking sensitivity and knowledge in its depiction.
Horror purists once considered the central villain from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) the patron saint of movie maniacs, and the reigning king of nightmares. The razor-fingered ghoul made an indelible mark in popular culture throughout the ’80s, becoming one of the most iconic horror figures since Nosferatu. Krueger became a pop-cultural juggernaut spanning the mediums of film, literature, and comic books. We’re all familiar with his M.O.: Freddy would stalk and hunt his victims in their dreams, using their strengths (and weaknesses) against them. With Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, released in 1984, the slasher genre turned a corner into a darkly imaginative new arena when Halloween and Friday the 13th had cornered the market on silent, knife-wielding masked lunacy. Freddy Krueger was a different kind of animal, providing razor-wit while bringing grisly death to the teens of Springwood.
One of Freddy’s defining characteristics is how creative he is when it comes to nightmarish homicide and the dream demon rarely ran out of ideas when he came to torturing his victims. From Tina’s (Amanda Wyss) traumatic chase in A Nightmare on Elm Street to Phillip’s (Bradley Gregg) literal transformation into a living puppet, the series is renowned for its litany of gruesomely inventive deaths. Sorry Jigsaw, Freddy got there first. But there comes a day when even Freddy Krueger begins to lose his luster – and it happened in the fifth entry in the franchise with an over-the-top and ridiculous kill. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child might be the weakest film in the franchise with a weirdly low death toll, an overblown gothic atmosphere, and the silliest death in its history.
What Is ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child’ About?
Directly following Renny Harlin’s tongue-in-cheek and fun A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, we are reacquainted with Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox), the final girl of the previous movie, now dating Dan Jordan (Danny Hassel), graduating and leading an almost-happy life. It doesn’t last. Her nemesis Freddy Krueger has figured out a way back to the world – reincarnation as Alice’s unborn son. Alice also has a new group of friends for Freddy to cut his way through model Greta (Erika Anderson), comic-book fanatic Mark (Joe Seely), and Yvonne (Kelly Jo Miner). But Alice refuses to take it lying down and delves into Freddy’s personal history and sordid conception.
Honestly, The Dream Child is a movie in narrative sleepwalker mode with the only death to stand out is Alice’s beau Dan’s bizarre metal-merging-with-man nightmare. Alice’s heroic journey in The Dream Master, her growth, and transformation are sidelined for a teen pregnancy plot and more Krueger backstory, most of which we learned in the third film. It doesn’t help that the movie feels smaller in scale and with fewer people rounding out the cast. You almost sympathize with Krueger here with him being deprived of potential victims. This makes the inclusion of Amanda Krueger (Beatrice Boepple) pointless and her connection to Alice clunky. Freddy weaponizes the unborn child, which is the most interesting part of the movie. The manic zeal of The Dream Master is replaced by a somber tonal quality and even Freddy seems to have lost his sense of humor and isn’t as quick with the quips. It is a genuinely depressing sequel. But that isn’t the worst thing about the film.
‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child’ Features Freddy’s Worst Kill
As previously mentioned, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is very light on carnage and the carnage viewers are offered leaves a lot to be desired. Not that we enjoy the bloodshed and horror, of course. The unfortunate napper in the most ridiculous kill scenario is the self-involved Greta. Greta’s mother is hosting a posh soirée at her home, oblivious to her daughter’s troubles and allowing her guests to objectify and slightly harass the girl. Her social-climbing mother berates Greta for not indulging in the food laid out, shaming Greta in front of an audience. Before you can say bon appetit, Freddy gatecrashes the dinner party and straps Greta to her chair like an overgrown toddler. Krueger presents a doll on a tray and with his claws, begins to dissect it and force-feeds the innards to Greta and her overbearing mother and the rest of the guests cheer him on.
He feeds the intestines, liver, and kidneys to Greta and her cheeks expand grotesquely before cutting away to Alice stocking her fridge with Greta emerging from putrefying food. All this might have proved affecting for viewers had the character of Greta appeared in more than a handful of scenes and if there was a bit more character development. It’s a ludicrous death that doesn’t so much induce fear as offend today. Suffering from being so one-note doesn’t help matters and ultimately makes her death lack impact or even make us care.
How Greta Gibson’s Demise Defies Decency Standards
Freddy Krueger isn’t well known for his tact and sensitivity, but the creators of the film should’ve known where to draw the line in how they portrayed mental health conditions. Despite being thinly drawn, multiple references are made about the character having an eating disorder and the death scene in the movie defies standards of decency in how the subject was handled. A writer has a certain responsibility to address an acute medical condition with a degree of sensitivity and knowledge and not treat it like the punchline to a joke. The writing was lazy and a little bit reckless, in all the wrong ways. In Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors it was a realistic depiction of a psychiatric facility and the people inhabiting it. The characterization and subject tackled here is sketchy, at best. Okay so the death is tame (at least by Nightmare’s standards) when compared to kills in previous entries, but the death here leaves a lot to be desired and nauseates for the wrong reasons.
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