Director: Renny Harlin
Cast: Lisa Wilcox, Danny Hassel, Tuesday Knight, Robert Englund
Have I Seen it Before: I honestly don’t remember. I’m going to hazard a guess and say I have not.
Did I Like It: The hoary cliche is to say that no movie in the Nightmare series beyond the original completely sucked. It’s reductive, of course, especially considering for my money the first film is likely over validated, but I would say both that the seventh is far and way the best film of the series*.
But there is a reason that the sequels receive mostly side eye from people. The novelty of Dream Warriors is long since gone, connections to the beginnings of the series have disappeared (a quick look-see into the history of the series indicates Wes Craven was even interested in continuing his re-connection with the series, but New Line myopically had no interest in his pitch), and what we’re left with is movies that bleed together and can’t even manage to entertain in the depraved way that even the basest horror films can accomplish.
One might think that I made a typo in the preceding paragraph when I referred to “movies,” but I assure you that was intentional. This movie is so blandly inconsequential that I was tempted for more than few minutes to write my first ever dual review, as this and The Dream Child (1989) are basically interchangeable. Even a schlocky—but somehow still over-validated—movie maker like Renny Harlin only manages to prove why he shouldn’t have briefly been given the keys to a-list movies, and only produces journeyman level work. He had to have either sold his soul to some supernatural entity (who isn’t Freddy Krueger (Englund)) or really delivered this one under budget to get where he got. That second one tends to make a lot more sense, because after Cutthroat Island (1995), everyone came to their senses.
*And, in an opinion that is likely to get things thrown at me, the best film Wes Craven ever made.