- AKA “Nightmare on Elm Street 5”
- Directed by Stephen Hopkins
- Written by Wes Craven John Skipp, Craig Spector
- Stars Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Kelly Jo Minter, Dandy Hassel
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFm_jiI8RiA
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Despite what we were led to believe in the 4th movie, Freddie isn’t gone for good and neither is Alice, survivor of the previous film. This continues the battle, along with working in a little more of Freddie’s origin story. It’s decent in every way and on par with the other sequels.
Spoilery Synopsis
Credits roll over glimpses of two people having sex. Afterward, the girl takes a shower. Something nasty comes up out of the drain, and then the stall starts to fill with water. Rather than drown, she somehow ends up in a dark, mysterious place where she’s suddenly dressed like a nun. She’s Amanda Krueger, in an asylum room with a hundred lunatics, and the guards lock her in. One of the hundred maniacs has a very familiar face.
Alice wakes up; that was a dream. She gets up and thinks twice before taking her shower. It’s graduation day at the high school, and both Alice and Yvonne are graduating. Greta, Mark, and Dan are there as well, and they’re all 80’s teen stereotypes with even more obnoxious parental stereotypes. Alice tells Dan about her dream last night.
On the way to work, Alice hallucinates two little girls chanting the “stay awake” nursery rhyme. She also sees the Nun running into the creepy old asylum. Alice watches as the attendants grab Amanda and wheel her into an operating room where they deliver her baby, who looks like a little puppet version of Freddy Krueger, burns and all. He quickly grows up into the adult Freddy. He’s back!
Before Freddy can kill Alice, Amanda the nun walks in and tells Freddy that she’s going to kill him. “I must be released from my earthly prison.” Alice is now suddenly in a diner, where Anne complains that she’s four hours late.
Meanwhile, at the pool party, Dan talks about him and Alice going to Europe for the summer. A guy gets cut, and Mark doesn’t like the sight of blood. Alice phones Dan and tells him that Freddy’s back. Dan hops in his truck and drives over there, but nods off on the road and crashes. He steals a motorcycle, but he’s still in the dream, so the motorcycle turns into Freddy, who crashes him again.
At the diner, Alice gets a vision of Dan’s death. She goes to the hospital, in shock, and the doctor says she’s pregnant. Alice tells Yvonne and her friends the history of Amanda and Freddy, bringing them up to date on all the stuff we’ve seen in previous films. Freddy uses Alice’s powers to draw people into dreams. Except, when Dan died, she wasn’t even asleep; Freddy must have found some other way.
Over at Greta’s house, her overbearing mother wants her to be a model, but Greta isn’t interested. Freddy shows up and makes her eat everything on the table as the guests watch. She blows up like a blimp but chokes to death in real life. Alice “sees” this happen as well.
Alice talks to Mark and Yvonne about what’s going on; he believes it, but she doesn’t. Mark draws comic book characters, and he’s suddenly “drawn” into one of his pictures. Alice goes in after him this time and runs into Jacob, a little boy she first met in the hospital. He says he’s been having bad dreams. It’s clear that Jacob is a “friend” of Freddy’s. Alice thinks that Jacob is her baby somehow. “Do unborn babies dream?”
Alice goes for an ultrasound, but the baby looks normal to the doctor. She gets a glimpse of the baby in the womb, and it looks like Freddy’s been feeding it the souls of her friends. Yvonne thinks Alice sounds insane. Dan’s parents want to know what Alice intends to do with the baby. They want to adopt it, but Alice isn’t interested.
Mark researches Amanda and reports that she killed herself after giving birth, so her soul is in torment, trapped in its earthly resting place. Alice goes to sleep to find Amanda. Meanwhile, Yvonne goes to the pool and sits in the hot tub. She jumps off the high dive and ends up in Freddy-land, where she runs into Alice.
At the same time, Mark battles Freddy with his own dream-powers. Freddy, of course, also becomes a superhero to fight back. Freddy then shreds his pulpy nemesis. Yvonne is now a believer.
Alice battles Freddy again, this time in the asylum with the hundred maniacs. They literally tear him limb from limb. She finds Freddy and Jacob together. They run through a collection of Escher’s stairways and visual weirdness until Jacob and Alice are together. It turns out, Freddy’s been inside her all along, and she finally drives him out. Meanwhile, Yvonne finds Amanda’s final resting place and releases her spirit.
Down in Freddy’s world, Amanda shows up and tells Jacob what to do. She tells the little boy to unleash his power, which releases Alice’s dead friends and pulls the ugly baby Freddy out of his body. Amanda grabs Baby Freddy, and Alice grabs baby Jacob. Both babies “go back inside” their mothers. Amanda then locks herself away, taking Fraddy with her.
Much later, Yvonne and Alice talk about her new baby, who looks perfectly normal. His name is Jacob. We cut away to them in the park as little girls do the “Stay Awake” rhyme in the background.
Commentary
This one continues where the previous three films left off but it’s built up on Freddy’s mother and the whole “son of a hundred maniacs” idea. It’s got good sets, decent enough acting for the franchises, and interesting situations. It also adds a bit of new lore to Freddy’s mythos.
If you liked the others, you’ll like this one, but there’s not really a whole lot new to see.