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.
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.