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

Through the blood-stained looking glass

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 30 December 2017]

The original 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is still to me one of the scariest and best horror films there is, as well as a truly great film in its own right and introduced us to one of the genre's most iconic villains in Freddy Krueger. It is always difficult to do a sequel that lives up to a film as good as 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' let alone one to be on the same level.

While the best of the sequels from personal opinion is the third, the fourth one is another one of the series' better sequels. Like the third film it is not on the same level as the original, a very difficult feat, but it does have enough of what is a large appeal of the original and why it works so well. Not perfect, but a lot of very good things.

'The Dream Master' is not without its flaws. With a couple of exceptions, the acting is largely wooden (while not the worst offender as such, Tuesday Knight is no Patricia Arquette) and the beginning rock song is really cheesy and feels out of place. The story at times gets a little silly.

However, Lisa Wilcox is a winning lead and Robert Englund continues to terrify as the iconic character that epitomises "what nightmares are made of". 'The Dream Master' is to me the second best directed sequel, courtesy of Renny Harlin, giving a potentially clichéd premise freshness and imagination.

Special effects are neatly executed. The humour is darkly comic and very funny and there are some wickedly cracking one-liners. The scares are aplenty and they are legitimately creepy with some cool deaths (the water bed one is a strong example) and amazing dream sequences thrown into the mix. Alice being flung into the on-screen action from the cinema balcony is one of the series' most marvellous highlights.

It's a beautifully photographed film, particularly the dream sequences, and is the most unique-looking 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' sequel with its European art-horror visual style. The production design is both dream-like and nightmare while the music is suitably haunting.

Overall, good sequel and one of the series' better ones. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Freddy''s Funniest Film

[ccthemovieman-1 · 6/10 · 15 April 2006]

This doesn't have the well-known cast of the previous Nightmare 3 movie but the special effects are still good.....each very different and some of them very funny. They make this perhaps the most entertaining entry in the series.

Memorable scenes include a junkyard, a water bed, a classroom, faces in a pizza, a girl bench pressing and faces coming out of Freddy's flesh. The storyline, however, features its usual dumb and ridiculous theology and has its usual share of unlikable obnoxious teens. Their parents weren't pictured as any better, perhaps worse.

In fact, the kids and parents are so bad you wind up rooting for Freddy to do them in. Perhaps that's the idea!

The plot was like a cheesy TV series

[Smells_Like_Cheese · 6/10 · 11 November 2003]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, the fourth installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. I was lucky enough to get the boxed DVD set of Nightmare on Elm Street series and I just finished all the sequels and while the fourth isn't a bad sequel or continuation of the story, it was pretty silly. It was cool to continue on with the dream warriors who were clever enough to defeat Freddy in the third Nightmare on Elm Street. But Freddy's back and he is more ticked off than ever and you know that's not good. But while the story was a good idea, the way it was executed, I wasn't really that into it, just the acting I think is what killed it for me. The way the movie was made was what made it feel like it was more of a cheesy TV show like on the Sci-fi Channel than an actual movie.

We start off where the third installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street series left off, the kids from the hospital are now grown up and are all on their own. But they are quickly killed off by Freddy hoping to get Kirsten back to help them, but they are too late. But when Kirsten finds a girl, Alice, she finds out that Alice has the same powers as she does. She has the ability to pull other people into her dreams and of course Alice is scared to find out how to use her powers, but she may just have to use them since Freddy is now after her and other kids too.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was a good enough sequel, but it just could have been better. I liked it, but so far it's not my top favorite sequel. Again, we've got some very cool deaths, don't think I could choose one, I think the water bed one was very cool. But once again, I don't wanna spoil it. Of course if you wanna see the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, this is recommended, but as a horror movie on it's own, it's OK.

6/10

Special effects extravaganza

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 22 June 2012]

The third sequel in the long-running series is set firmly in the world of the late 1980s: we're talking lame fashions, big hair, rubbery special effects and a rather uneven tone veering midway between comedy and horror. It's all about what's over the top, with everybody involved aiming to outdo the scares and FX of the previous movies, but in the end none of this can disguise the fact that by this stage the story was wearing very thin. This is nothing more than a supernatural slasher that virtually reprises the plot of the first three films in the series with different characters.

Of course, watching Robert Englund hamming it up will always be a guilty pleasure, and I have to say that the special effects are also pretty impressive. In the days before CGI, the FX team here went all out in creating bizarre and inventive death scenes, most notably a moment involving a giant cockroach. Freddy's resurrection at the outset is gratuitously silly yet somehow still works, paying homage to the old Chris Lee/Dracula resurrections in spectacular fashion. There are lots of able technicians working hard behind the scenes, including Howard Berger and Screaming Mad George, and in a film this reliant on special effects their diligence pays off.

It's hard to review this title objectively, because watching it makes me nostalgic for '80s cinema in all its tacky badness. But I think it's fair to say that this is one of the better sequels out there; it's not frightening in the least, but it is entertaining and it's one of few enjoyable Renny Harlin-directed movies in existence, along with DIE HARD 2 and DEEP BLUE SEA.

Well it ain't Dr. Seuss

[mattressman_pdl · 7/10 · 10 December 2007]

Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) directs Dream Master, the fourth entry in the franchise about a maniacal dreamstalker named Freddy Kruger. The entry is extremely passable and enjoyable.

The survivors of Dream Warriors are still haunted by memories of Freddy Kruger. But Freddy isn't quite dead as he picks up his glove and takes up where he left off...with vengeance. The only flaw in his plan: a shy outcast named Alice who harbors powers that will enable her to do battle with Kruger as she assumes qualities of past Freddy victims.

Although some of the more interesting characters are sacrificed first, the Nightmare franchise proves to be deeper and more original than any other slasher series around. Some inventive deaths and imagery on display as Robert Englund devours the scenery as Freddy.

Solid entry in franchise.

[paulclaassen · 6/10 · 2 July 2018]

Another classic in the series. Once again a solid storyline and excellent visual effects.

A film further plunging its franchise down into a neverending trench of inconsistency

[StevePulaski · 5/10 · 22 October 2015]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is the point in the franchise where comedy began to eclipse the franchise's almost unbridled devotion to horror sensibilities. It was the film that turned Freddy Krueger into a pop culture figure, capable of regurgitating every lackluster pun imaginable like an MTV VJ rather than a horror figure you'd hate to see in your nightmares. Finally, it was the film to bear the franchise's peak budget, showing it off by including very elaborate and immaculately detailed dream sequences that toyed with the perception of reality in a manner so believable that you swore you were being haunted yourself. It's safe to say that the series most expensive installment also turned out to be its most divisive and revolutionary.

The story picks up on characters from Dream Warriors, the previous installment, such as Kristen (Tuesday Knight), Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), and Joey (Rodney Eastman), all of whom have been released from the mental hospital that confined them for the past months and back into the public school system and their normal homes. Kristen winds up reacquainting her friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox) and her boyfriend Rick (Andras Jones), and is enjoying living her normal life until she realizes that dreaming of, or even expressing paranoia over, Freddy Krueger, the burned-faced, sweater-clad killer that haunted them before, could potentially make him return. When Freddy (Robert Englund, the only constant in this series, so it seems) winds up returning to haunt the victims in his dreams, the focus lies in Alice, as she's the most ignorant of Freddy's ways.

Consistency has long been a problem with this franchise and The Dream Master shows a refusal for it to accept any kind of remote pattern. Because of the constant directorial and screen writing shakeups, and Craven's varying and largely debatable involvement with each individual film, little in the way of tonal or narrative cohesion could be retained. The overall scope and reach of the Freddy Krueger character got hazy with the second film and found itself resorting back into the laws of the first film, with no acknowledgement of the second film other than a vague, ambiguous line of dialog from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The Dream Master's refusal to assert itself by accepting the emphasis on fear and vulnerability ideas from the first and third film or the metaphorical significance of the Freddy Krueger character is evident by the film's emphasis on comedy from what was previously the franchise's main source for terror.

Being that The Dream Master is the most expensive film from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, one can see where director Renny Harlin and his set/production designers wanted to put their emphases - the dream sequences. To the film's credit, the dream sequences are the most elaborate and well-conceived dream sequences the franchise has yet to see, even more-so believable and immersive than in Dream Warriors. Consider the scene where Kincaid is trapped in a nightmarish junkyard that molds and crafts itself at what is ostensibly the snap of Freddy's fingers, effectively trapping him in a sea of broken-down cars that is revealed to be a lot bigger in scope than we could've imagined. The scene works beautifully because it focuses on the core idea of being trapped in a dream lucid enough for you to actively move around and possess your own decision-making skills but not lucid enough where you can control the dream. The result is especially terrifying and this is one of the few dream sequences where Freddy is mostly serious.

The remainder of the dream scenes only get more decorated in appearance, and continue to live up to this first major one in size and scope. The problem is, with each sequence, Freddy gets less and less convincing. Writers Brian Helgeland (who would go on to direct Oscar-nominated screenplays for films like L.A. Confidential and Mystic River) and Scott Pierce turn Freddy into a pun/quip machine, who seems to always be in search for the next cheeky line to say rather than anything that provokes a kind of uneasiness for the audience. This desecration of a frightening character, turning him into a second rate comedian, significantly lessens his effectiveness as a character, especially when we see him command some of the most visually stunning locations he has yet to be apart of in the entire series.

Finally, though it's a relatively minor, almost moot, point, the acting here has noticeably taken a turn for the worst. The Dream Master feels like a lackluster display of amateur-hour, Second City acting, particularly from the likes of Tuesday Knight and Andras Jones, who just do an immensely poor job at being believable screen presences. While acting in horror films is traditionally never the first thing one judges on, when it's so wooden, as it is here, it can't help be a jarring feature, especially when the film itself already isn't particularly good.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 works in the way it decides to further construct and elaborate on the many worlds of which Freddy inhabits, in addition with taking on some seriously twisted and quirky scenes the franchise has never seen before. However, it does a miserable job of sticking to whatever guns the series had drawn at this point by sacrificing scares for cheap quips and capable actors for whomever could fill the part quickly and inexpensively. The result is a film that was evidently rushed on every level that wasn't visual effects or production design.

Starring: Lisa Wilcox, Robert Englund, Tuesday Knight, Andras Jones, Ken Sagoes, and Rodney Eastman. Directed by: Renny Harlin.

How sweet. Fresh meat.

[hitchcockthelegend · 6/10 · 8 June 2013]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is directed by Renny Harlin and written by Brian Helgeland and Scott Pierce. It stars Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman and Brooke Theiss. Music is by John Easdale and Craig Safan and cinematography by Steven Fierberg.

Freddy Krueger (Englund) is back again to finish off the last of the Dream Warriors, but when he enters the dreams of a new girl, Alice Johnson (Wilcox), he gets more than he bargained for...

In spite of part three being something of a return to form for the Elm Street franchise, it still signalled the point where Krueger as a character started to become more fun villain than a terrifying presence. By the time this fourth instalment rolled around, Krueger was iconic for sure, but also he was a marketing tool for merchandise, even getting his own spin-off TV show. Where once was this vile child murderer invading the dreams of children and killing them, now is a guy selling dolls and someone more known for a quip than a kill.

Dream Master follows the basic Elm Street formula, Krueger returns to kill more kids in their dreams. The methods range from the icky (insect) to the impressive (pizza), and the effects work is mostly enjoyable. The tying up of loose ends shows some modicum of thought in the writing, while the big finale is actually worth the wait. However, the acting away from a perky Wilcox is pretty poor and familiarity of formula does indeed breed contempt. It's just about above average as a whole, thanks in the main to the inventive kills, but as this third sequel coined it in at the box office, with that comes the basic fact that Kruegerville is a town built only for cash purposes. 6/10

Freddy Krueger Is Back

[claudio_carvalho · 5/10 · 30 March 2009]

Kristen Parker (Tuesday Knight), Roland Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey Crusel (Rodney Eastman) are having normal lives and studying in Springwood, Ohio, after defeating the evil Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). Kristen is very close to her boyfriend Rick Johnson (Andras Jones) and his sister Alice (Lisa Wilcox) is her best friend. Kristen has a premonition with Freddy Krueger, who has resurrected and is chasing the trio of survivors of the Elm Street. When Freddy kills the three survivors, Kristen transfers her ability to draw other people to her dreams to Alice, and Freddy uses the power of the teenager to gather the souls of her school friends.

"A Nightmare on Elm Street art 4: The Dream Master" is a weak sequel to the classic "A Nightmare on Elm Street". Patricia Arquette, who performed Kristen Parker in the previous "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors", was pregnant and not able to film this sequel. The actress and musician Tuesday Knight that replaced Patricia Arquette recorded the song "Nightmare" used during the film's opening credits. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Hora do Pesadelo 4 – O Mestre dos Sonhos" ("The Hour of the Nightmare 4 – The Master of the Dreams")

The best slasher sequel since the original film in A Nightmare on Elm Street film franchise!

[ivo-cobra8 · 10/10 · 28 March 2016]

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) It is one of my personal favorite horror movies with the original A Nightmare on Elm Street film, it is solid, decent, excellent horror slasher sequel in A Nightmare on Elm Street series franchise. I love this movie to death and my favorite heroine is Alice Johnson. This flick is Better than part 2,5,6 and the horrible awful remake that I hate to death!

We have a new heroine named Alice, which is awesome. Lisa Wilcox is a bad ass in this flick, wondering what happened to that actress. Lisa Wilcox did an excellent job as shy heroine Alice. Tuesday Knight blow my heart away she was the heart and the soul of this movie. She wrote performed the theme song Nightmare for this film. This film is actually my Renny Harlin's favorite movie alongside Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2 and Deep Blue Sea. Renny Harlin did a great job with direction and visuals of the film, I think it's actually some of the best directing work he did, and Lisa Wilcox's character Alice is probably to Freddy what Tommy Jarvis is to Jason, an enemy that he will always fight but he will always lose. This film has a lot of good soundtracks that I love. It has an excellent cast that I love. Wes Craven's a Nightmare on Elm Street will be my number 1 while this one will be my number 5.

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.

Before I start what I like about this movie, I love Wes Craven's original film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) which is my favorite best horror slasher film. My third favorite film of the series is Wes Craven's last movie New Nightmare (1994) which is my third favorite film in A Nightmare on Elm Street film franchise and I think is the third best film.

Things I Love in this movie: I like the music scores by John Easdale and Craig Safan, they are a lot of music tracks that are put in the film from the 80's. I love Tuesday Knight's song Nightmare she played it during opening credits. I love Tuesday Knight and Lisa Wilcox's acting performance both of the leads did an outstanding job as acting her characters. Lisa Wilcox was a bad ass in this film, her character as Alice Johnson was well written, she was decent and the only heroine that she never died in the film series. Tuesday Knight as Kristen Parker was decent and she was awesome, she was better than Patricia Arquette I love movies from the 80's action and horror films that I love, so this is pretty solid good movie, far way better than 5 and remake which I think they are the worst one I have ever saw. I like that this movie is fantasy and it has a good kills and Freddy is trying still to be scary.

Kristen Parker (Tuesday Knight) was actually a Dream Warrior she had a power to call her friends in her dreams, Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox) was a Dream Master and she gave her power to Freddy, of course Kristen was the last Elms Street child, but Freddy need it new ones to get the souls from the children to become more powerful than ever. I like the boiler room scene Kristen eventually finds herself in Freddy's boiler room. It is explained that Kristen is the last child from Elm Street, and Freddy needs her help to get more children. I like that is that explanation. I like the last fight between Alice and Freddy, Alice change her self in to an bad ass heroine she fight's Freddy defeats him with a mirror of his own image and she releases all souls of the children that Freddy took them away. I love that Alice saves Dan Jordan (Danny Hassle) from death. Brooke Theiss as Debbie Stevens was beautiful, gorgeous and hot I love her in this film.

Roland Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey Peterson (Rodney Eastman) both returned from previous installment The Dreams Warriors and they were both killed off in the beginning of the film which is stupid. I really don't like this, the characters who survived in previous installment been killed off. It feel's to me like Nancy's effort keeping them save was for nothing. That's the only problem I have with this film.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is a 1988 American slasher horror film and the fourth film in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. The film was directed by Renny Harlin, stars Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox and Danny Hassle.

Overral: I enjoy this film every time I see it and I have fun with it, goes very fast around it is fast paced and entertaining. 10/10 Bad Ass Seal Of Approval

Gone down in my opinion

[Stevieboy666 · 6/10 · 5 August 2018]

Freddy is resurrected from the dead when a dog takes a pee on the ground in the scarp yard in which he was buried! That kind of sets the tone for the fourth instalment. When this first came out on VHS I was blown away by the special effects & it quickly became my second favourite in the franchise, after the first film. This was mainly due to the special effects (impressive at the time) and gimmicky way in which people die. However, 30 years on and in my opinion the film has lost some of that initial positivity, I know think that part 3 is a far better movie. There were splashes of humour in part 3 but it still managed to also be a dark, scary horror film. But in Dream Warriors Freddy is now more of a comic, spouting corny one-liners, which is something that I personally wasn't so fond of. The special effects are the real star here. It's still a fun movie to watch but I think it was the point where the series started to go down hill. Linnea Quigley has a nice little topless part as one of the souls coming out of Freddy's body, worthy of a freeze-frame!

Freddy's falling from grace

[Superunknovvn · 5/10 · 24 September 2005]

I love the "A Nightmare On Elm Street" franchise, I really do. I enjoy it for its originality and if for nothing else its typically 80's cheese factor. Still, I will never forgive the makers of sequels 2, 4, 5, 6, even 3 and 7 for taking one of the greatest horror stories ever told and turning it into something so laughable. With Part IV Freddy Krueger was more of an antihero for the MTV generation than ever before. What was then hip is now ridiculous and director Renny Harlin's endeavor to make the movie as stylish as possible certainly doesn't make this entry in the series any spookier.

The first 5 minutes of part IV alone show everything that's wrong about the movie. An awful rock song sung by Tuesday Knight (who replaces Patricia Arquette as Kristen) plays over a little girl drawing something. The camera pans away and we see it's a painting of Freddy's house on Elm Street. Kirsten approaches and asks the girl where Freddy was. The girl replies that Freddy wasn't in, then laughs hysterically and disappears. Why? No one knows. Kristen goes inside the house. Why? No idea, but the camera follows her with such an amateurish movement it's the first time this movie is unintentionally funny. Inside the house Kristen jumps because she sees a shadow of something that appears to be a claw on the wall. When she takes a closer look, though, it turns out that this was just an illusion created by a branch that looks NOTHING like the shadow. Anyway, the next thing we see is Kirsten getting blown from one room into the other. Why? Don't ask, there's no answer.

It goes on like this and you just turn off your brain, because it's obvious that this movie doesn't try for one second to make any sense. It's hard to believe that an audience ever watched this without feeling cheated. However, Freddy Krueger's fame was at its height in 1988 and nothing could stop this movie from becoming the most successful installment of the Nightmare series. Not the shallow and unbelievable characters, nor the bad acting (except for the ever so wonderful Robert Englund, that is) or the non-existent story.

The nudity, the bad one-liners and the often imaginative kills still get a chuckle out of me now and then and, as I've said, I still enjoy watching the movie every once in a while, but like most of the "Nightmare" sequels, this one is just nowhere near as good as it could and should have been.

One of the best - highly imaginative!

[gridoon · 6/10 · 18 November 1999]

"Nightmare on Elm Street 4" is one of the best entries in the series. Okay, the first is considered a classic, maybe because it had a feeling of poetic surrealism that is indeed lost here. But, come on, it is the FOURTH Freddy film, did you REALLY expect it to be scary? Freddy delivers indeed too many puns, however some of them actually hit the mark. After all, the quality of a slasher film doesn't depend exclusively on how "serious" and "vicious" the killer is - he was more serious in "Part 2", which was an embarrassment, he was less serious in "Part 3", which was an imaginative, entertaining film. As for "Part 4", it has way-above-average acting, a polished look (just compare it to some early "Friday The 13th" cheapies) and some gruesome, stunning visual effects. Above all, the movie exploits more possibilities about the links between reality and dreams than the "classic" original did. It is worth seeing.

Hated it even when I was 14

[latherzap · 2/10 · 15 June 2000]

I still consider the first Freddy film a classic, and part 3 was decent. But I was soooo bored watching this. I remember seeing it ten years ago on cable. About a half hour into it I wanted to turn it off, but a compulsive part of me wanted to finish it so that I could complete the series. With fifteen minutes to go I turned it off, and decided to make myself a sandwich ( which promised to be more exciting than the film's ending).

No plot synopsis necessary for this, I'll just say that the characters were absolute cardboard. None of the scenes felt connected to each other. It was like each scene was a 5 minute short created to show off a unique special effect. Nothing scary to be found here. I never saw the sequels that came out after this. I give it a 2.

This was the first Freddy I saw when I was a kid and will always be my favorite

[vwjettaluv32 · 10/10 · 21 April 2007]

Its funny how I stumbled on to the Nightmare on Elm Street Serises. I was about 8 or 9 at the time. My father and I had a great relationship. He would take me to a movie every week. I was the envy of all the other kids because he didn't care if a movie was rated R or what.

So here I am looking to go to our Friday movie and my dad is looking in the paper asking me what I want to see. He asked me if I was ready for my first scary movie. I jumped for joy when he asked me that. At that time I hadn't really seen a true scary movie yet. Just the ones that where on during Halloween.

So off we went me and my dad. I remember how nervous I was because I didn't know what to expect. Here I am 9 years old in the movie line with all these teenagers grabbing there girlfriend waste and making scary faces trying to scare them. I just grabbed my fathers hand very tight and made my way in.

Wow! My first scary movie I thought to myself well here it goes. I remember asking my dad if Freddy was real about 10 times during the movie. I laughed, I cried, I screamed, I was in love with horror.

I Was Freddys number 1 fan after this movie. I bought all the older movies. I really liked number 1 and thought number 2 was really weird back then.

Anyways I love this movie for all the right reasons. There is a lot of gore. A lot of cheesy acting and just plain fun. I am not going to give anything away just go wacth it for yourself. You will love it.

Underrated

[johnjanis · 7/10 · 31 October 2021]

Probably the most underrated movie of the whole franchise and definitely better than the next two which followed. 5.7 is too low in my opinion. It was pretty much as good as part 3

Why such a drop off in the rating difference?

Fatigue? Certainly not the quality.

It probably had the most action, the most kills and the most gore of any of the series as well.

Definitely one of the best 3 or 4 Nightmare movies in my opinion.

Tired, oh so very Tired!

[mjw2305 · 5/10 · 14 October 2007]

After huge success with the first outing, Wes Craven tried to correct the wrongs of Freddy's Revenge with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and he made no mistake about ensuring he killed Freddy and left him buried for good.

For some reason (Almost Certainly Money) Renny Harlin (Director) and William Kotzwinkle (Writer) decided to resurrect him again claiming 'Pure Evil Never Really Dies'

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 - The Dream Master is an unnecessary sequel that is clearly milking the success of the franchise. Kristen Parker once again takes the lead (but Miss Arquette no longer plays the character) Freddy is once again funnier than he is scary, as with all the non Wes Craven episodes, and its pretty much more of the same with less story than before, and the odd decent death scene.

5/10 Freddy is still cool, even if the movie isn't

You wont be disappointed

[Realrockerhalloween · 15 August 2016]

A nightmare on elm street 4 was an instant classic aimed at a new generation of movie goers and is considered one of the last good sequels.

The kids felt like real life friends who known each other all their lives and care about each other. What makes this one special is they actually mourn or care as their friends are picked off one by one.

Freddy's puns have taken on ironic twists about the fates of his victims and showing how cruel he actually became.

The picture looks polished, gruesome death scenes and visuals that are eye candy for anyone taking a course on camera techniques.

A new concept used here is gates that need to be protected one by a demon and the other a dream master.

The two are constantly in battle and can close the other's door if one gets the upper hand. This series always finds a way to stay fresh and dig into its roots.

Lisa Wilcox is leading lady material who starts out as why and becomes a strong confident woman in her own right.

In fact she's my favorite heroine and a character study have been done on the life and passion she brought to the role.

Was it scary? No it wasn't. Yet It was a high point on my list and makes up for it in other ways. I cares about the kids, I loved the atmosphere and bending of reality.

Freddy Krueger is the king of cool and brings his A game. I rate it eight out of ten.

This movie is not the best or the worst in the series.

[atinder · 5/10 · 17 January 2010]

This time with have Kristen Parker, Roland Kincaid, Joey Crusel return for the 4th movie in this series, I was disappointed that they re casted Kristen Parker, which i think was a really big mistake.

The way Freddy came back from the death, was a bit ridiculous but he dose not take long to get the last two elm street kids, before going face to face with Kristen, who is the last of elm street kids but silly Kristen get her new Friend Alice involved with Freddy.

Alice is now key to Freddy as she bring her Friend to Freddy, not intentional. she has to stop him before he kills again.

The deaths scenes in this are not as good as A Nigthamre on elm street 1 or A nightmare on elm street 3 ,

I did enjoy watching the dream scenes which were really good, i loved the class dream scene was great.

The other thing, I liked in this was the way, Freddy died , it was really gross and scary, I think that was best Freddy deaths in the whole series.

Now the acting, I did not like the new Kristen but happy that she was not in the whole movie, I think Girl that played Annie did a great Job.

I give this movie a 5/10

(The story of) how Freddy got too much screen time

[tixsr-6000 · 4/10 · 28 August 2014]

It gets as worse as it remains in next parts from these part, too much time for Freddy on the screen (with bad jokes), stupid killings and mindless plot. As always, Rennys style to shoot is quite childish and way too brutal. This is best of his directions I've seen but not quite convincing. There's much more 80's music and dancing scenes (like in Footloose and such 80's musical movies) than any other parts of A Nightmare on Elm Street series. The best part is when nearly every main character from previous movie was killed (because they were quite irritating). Also even the first part was kind of brutal (wich I liked) this one goes too far; its kind of childish. Also plot is quite stupid, Freddy has been buried 3 times before this and even still he terrorizes kids dreams. And his recovering story isn't even good or clever. There is also some lazy things like first deaths; earlier only way you could die in dreams and real life in same time was that Freddy killed you with certain way and then you don't for example burn in real life, your body is just burn but don't burn like you could see it in real life. Now those deaths and ways to die come to real life and also real life and dreams/nightmares mixes together. This movie is little bit unfinished.

CHEER! - (8 stars out of 10)

[BJG-Reviews · 8/10 · 4 December 2021]

The stage curtains open ...

For whatever reason, this 4th installment in the Elm Street series is my personal favorite. Maybe it's because it was directed by Renny Harlin who has a certain flair for action sequences. Maybe it's because I adore Lisa Wilcox and her character Alice, and the fact that she kicked some butt. Maybe it's because the supporting cast of teens really seemed like a tight knit group of friends having fun making this movie. Maybe it's because of the amazing visuals we were treated to. I don't know why exactly, but I absolutely loved "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 - The Dream Master".

Having survived the events of the 3rd film, Kristen has formed a new circle of friends and is back in school with a boyfriend. Sensing that there is something wrong, she finds herself back in Freddy's nightmareland and he draws upon her power to pull in "fresh meat" so that he can start all over again. Alice, her best friend, is the silent, recluse type who is doing her best to hold things together at home. As the friends around her begin to die, she assumes their individual powers, sheds her fears, and faces Freddy for a winner-takes-all battle.

The transformation of Alice in this movie was the compelling story line, and the final confrontation delivers all the goods. Behind tight direction and good editing, we are given some outstanding visuals and memorable scenes. One of which was the movie theater scene where Alice is sucked into the silver screen. The acting in this one was a bit better than the previous installments, and this bunch of teen friends were people I actually cared about.

I highly recommend this movie at a very strong 8 stars out of 10. It is my personal favorite in the series - maybe because it's the perfect blend of everything I mentioned earlier. And as such, it still holds up pretty well since it was first released in 1988. "The Dream Master" is a winner.

Nightmare On Elm Street Lite

[mentalcritic · 1/10 · 22 September 2004]

As horror film franchises moved into the late 1980s, the clamp-down that the MPAA inflicted upon Hollywood was biting hard. Films were going into theatrical release with much of the content that their budget was spent on missing. Some filmmakers defiantly thumbed their nose at the MPAA by manipulating the system, while the makers of A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 simply neutered their film in advance. Either way, once this virtually bloodless film was compared with its three predecessors, it's no wonder that fans basically ignored it.

To understand why the makers of part seven basically pretended that this and the two films after it never happened, one has to think about what a film buff wants to see when they go to see a film like this. Maybe one can tone down the sex and drugs, or make the atmosphere more pastel than dark, but once the blood or detailed kills are removed, every reason your core audience has for watching goes with them.

Adding insult to injury is a major change in the Freddy character. Parts one and two kept him in the shadows, expressing himself through an economy of words. Part three put him in front of the camera more, but kept him grotesque enough that his quips added interest. Here, it would only take a few modifications to make Freddy into something one would hold in their arm when they curl up to sleep. During half the film, I was half expecting the rest of the cast to break into song about how he's just misunderstood.

The acting quotient is severely diminished here, too. Robert Englund dutifully does his best with lousy dialogue, but even his hamming it up cannot disguise his lack of enthusiasm. As he is puking out dialogue that David Bowie would have refused during Labyrinth, one can sense he longs to go back to miniseries like V. Ken Sagoes and Rodney Eastman dutifully return from the previous episode, but given how subdued this one is by comparison, they cannot compensate for their lack of talent by overacting here. Patricia Arquette felt that pieces of junk like Time Out and Far North were more worthy of her time, and given that she's appeared in films recently, I think she's made the right choice. She is replaced here by the unfortunately named Tuesday Knight. As an actor, she makes one hell of a waitress, I'm sure.

This was Renny Harlin's first high-profile production. It pretty much set the entire tone for his career, with production after production based on a shaky premise and bad script. You know a director is cursed when Die Hard 2 is the most high-brow entry on his resumé. Honestly, has this man ever directed something that doesn't resemble an extended music video?

In all, I gave A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 a one out of ten. When you're in a conversation with anyone regarding a piece of garbage that sells out to the lowest common denominator and they try to tell you that there's nothing wrong with "appealing to a broader audience", tell them they obviously haven't seen this film.

An Ok Entry

[HaddonfieldJason · 23 August 2003]

Freddy is ressurected once again,to kill teens. Once he's killed all the elm street kids. He is powerless,until he meets The Dream Master Alice. Then a war begins. Englund leans more to comedy in this entry,but is still creepy. Not very good.

2.5/4

Master of a disaster...

[fmarkland32 · 3/10 · 1 August 2006]

This time Freddy returns thanks to a dog who couldn't find a hydrant, to this time wipe out the original kids on Elm Street and the new ones who currently dwell on that god forsaken street. (Why do these people keep buying houses there?) However this time Freddy meets his match against "The Dream Master" who can manipulate her dreams. I remember seeing # 3 and saying that if I could have a dream power to take out Freddy I'd be an expert in martial arts of course back when you're 13 you often talk about the dumbest thing with your friends, so then the next year when Nightmare # 4 came out there was indeed a martial artist but the potential for such a sequence goes unrealized, that aside the movie is too tongue in cheek. Freddy has lost all of his edge and the killings have gone from surreal and suspenseful to just plain silly. Indeed the movie knows that because of the pop culture phenomenon that the public stopped buying into Freddy as being genuinely scary (That is unless you are 7 years old) and so they just try to make it comic. I for one wasn't buying and given the rating neither was anyone else. However there are a couple inspired moments, as I said the climax is fun and there is an amusing sequence with pizza but because the movie is now written strictly to genre formula we basically sit and watch as teenagers get slaughtered one by one. The only suspense being not whether various characters will die but how. In other words it became repetitive and dull.

*1/2 out 4-(Poor)

One of the best in the series.

[gregorydewaegheneire · 7/10 · 4 September 2021]

Great installment that could have been better if the actors were up to par.