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

This fourth installment is basically Karate Kid meets Freddy with all the uplifting rock music and action montages it implies. Right from the start, as actress Tuesday Knight (who reprised the role of Kristen Parker from Patricia Arquette) starts singing the cheesy rock anthem Nightmare, the viewer knows he's a long, long way from Wes Craven's original film. He knows that Freddy has sold out and become nothing more than a marketing gimmick aimed at undiscerning kids. Everything that made the first Nightmare so great has now been removed to fit the needs of a mainstream release. The fountains of blood are no more than nostalgic memories. The oppressive atmosphere was vaporized. And because of all the recent updates to the central mythology, it has now become a confused mess that nobody cares to explain anymore. After all, why try and come up with an explanation when you've got "dream logic", that is the magical ability of screenwriters to instantly justify any absurd event that takes place in a film where dreams are involved. What we are left with is a lot of lame visual gags and campy one-liners drowned in a sea of half-baked dialogues and bad plot twists with dazzling, but mostly ineffective special FX on top. It's truly jaw-dropping to watch such drivel derived from Craven's brilliant concept. Worst is the sluggish pace they've given the film and their lack of respect for teenage lives. But as bad as it may be, #4 nearly avoids oblivion thanks to a truly inspiring red-headed heroine and the best of all Nightmare endings.

Lisa Wilcox is gorgeous as a red-head.

She's one of the two reasons to watch this film.

Here's the plot as it appears onscreen. The gaps in logic you will have to fill in for yourselves. The film opens with Kristen Parker at the threshold of the Thompson's old homestead (in a dream). There is that annoying little girl in a white dress who is making a chalk drawing of the house on the alley. When asked if someone is home, she giggles, and assures Kristen that no one is there. But as she turns and reveals the full content of her drawing, we clearly see the face of Freddy appearing behind one of the windows. Gasp! Then, it starts raining and Kristen takes refuge inside the house where some funky shit happens, such as the fall of a tricycle from the second floor. As Kristen wanders deeper into the house, she eventually emerges into the old boiler room where Freddy used to bring back his victims. She freaks out, then summons Kincaid and Joey (you know, the two other survivors from the previous film) who try to convince her that Freddy is not coming back. But he is! And you know how? With the contact of fiery dog piss against his grave, of course! When Kincaid goes to sleep the following day, his dog enters his dream wherein they find themselves back at the car impound where the bones of old Freddy are buried. Then the dogs pisses fire on the ground and the grave opens. Inside, we see bones that magically reassemble and get covered with pulsating flesh in a sequence so derivative of Hellraiser that it seems miraculous for Robert Shaye to have avoided a lawsuit. Anyway, Freddy is back, and he easily dispatches Kincaid and Joey. But when he attacks Kristen, she is somehow able to draw another of her friends into the dream and transfer her power of dream summoning over. Kristen dies but she has entrusted her power to the new girl, Alice. Of course, Alice is overwhelmed by this new ability that she doesn't fully understand. And unwittingly, she starts drawing innocent people into her dreams where Freddy picks them up one by one. How the transfer of power works is not totally clear nor is the reason why Freddy now needs an intermediary in order to kill, nor is the reason why he needs to kill more children than those from Elm Street, etc... Anyway, after much trials and tribulations during which her brother and most of her friends have been slaughtered (without so much as a hint of drama), Alice confronts Freddy in an abandoned church where they duke it out in what is one of the most exhilarating scenes of the series crowned by the very best finale.

Freddy's demise is truly awesome this time around, but the road to get there is long and arduous. The viewer literally has to suffer all the way. Suffer narrative inconsistencies, suffer Freddy's new campy persona, but mostly, suffer the incredible boredom caused by a screenplay saturated with empty dialogue, but lacking any form of dramatic tension. The actors talk and talk and talk without conviction, without forwarding the plot in any way and without fleshing out their characters beyond the rigid boundaries of flat archetypes. Let's see here... We've got a black kid to help seamlessly use the word 'motherfucker'. Check. A pervy kid that will justify the appearance of a naked pin-up and allow Freddy's use of a "wet dream" wisecrack. Check. A damaged, chain-smoking bimbo to throw in the boiler (as demonic punishment for her nasty habit). Check. A nerdy chick with thick glasses that we can conveniently sacrifice following a sleepless night of study (1). Check. A bad-ass chick to justify close-ups of sweaty breasts while she is doing bench presses. Check. A spiky-haired karateka to cash in on the teenage martial arts trend and to dispense Miyagi-style wisdom. Check. Finally, we've got the day-dreaming daddy's girl who has the potential of becoming the new heroine by learning to fight for herself, and the sweet, supportive jock with which she can form an item. Check.

If you look at it, the screenwriters have done a pretty good job of list checking. Not only have they managed to assemble a heterogeneous group of teens the likes of which you can only find in algebra textbooks promoting diversity in the classroom, but they also made sure that the whole gamut of exploitative sex, violence and foul language could be carefully channeled and justified by something akin to characterization. In all fairness, the characters don't need to be fleshed out at all since they function exactly as one would expect them to. The main story doesn't need to be fleshed out either since the "dream killer" gimmick is now known to everybody. All that is left to do is to connect the dots and drag the paper-thin plot from one kill to the next, mechanically adding one wisecrack per kill. Plausibility is not an issue here (remember "dream logic"), nor is the emotional strain that the brutal murders of one's friends could have on a teenager. It's like the characters in the film fully realize that their friends were expandable, and that their death were inevitable. So why bother with exposition in the first place? It's obvious here that the screenwriters were doing a quick job to precipitate the release of this latest installment. But what's truly annoying here is the total lack of willingness to create any form of scary atmosphere. Most of the scenes are shot in daylight and feature healthy youths talking to one another. At times, it almost seems like a bad version of a John Hugues film. Only the occasional kill will draw you back to the world of horror. And thus, seeing how the dialogues are empty, the plot inconsistent and the mood non-existent, all we can do as spectators is wait for the next kill. And then wait for the next one. And then wait some more. There's no point in even caring for the characters as nobody in the diegetic world seems to mind their death, save for that one moment when someone will state that: "he/she is really shook up by [insert name]'s death". On top of all this, the kills aren't even that great. So you end up waiting to be disappointed over and over again, until the final few shots of the final battle which allows you to forgive the film a little and put it back on the shelf with a light heart.

From child killer to pop icon, there is but a step.

Fortunately, there is Alice. She is by far the best character in this mess, and thankfully, she is also the protagonist. She starts out as a shy, obedient girl that's prone to daydreaming. Weakened by her mother's death, she has become helpless. She cannot defend herself, nor can she manage to be assertive in front of others, particularly her drunken father and hunky love interest Dan. Her evolution is necessary for her blossoming into a woman, but also for her fighting Freddy and releasing the souls of all the children he has killed. That said, this new installment introduces a neat new gimmick to the Freddy mythos: the entrapment of children's souls within his body. If anything, the cutting-edge FX allows the creation of a truly terrifying update of previous chapters. We can now see lamenting faces protruding from Freddy's scarred chest along with bloodied arms who will eventually rip him to shreds from the inside out. This is both cool and relevant to the story. And so is the transformation of the brawny girl into a roach. It taps into her primal fear of bugs to create her own personal nightmare while allowing FX guys to show off the whole extent of their art. So there are some good things to say about the film, but since they mostly concern bit parts and ideas randomly thrown in the mix, it doesn't justify any recommendation of the film as a whole. But if you are one with a particularly effective selective memory, you might actually remember this film as being good. And if you are one like that, you probably think everything in life is good already, so...

Breasts close-ups, gore and amazing special FX, even

the best kill of the Nightmare sequels can't save #4!

I won't add much more, save to say that we had to see it coming. At the rate they were releasing the Nightmare sequels of this era (one per year), those offerings were bound to be derivative of other popular films (here, we have The Karate Kid and Hellraiser amongst others) while maintaining low quality dialogues, characterization, acting and plot. And seeing how Freddy had become more of a pop icon than a truly fearsome boogeyman, what with all the children dressing up as the razor-gloved child molester on Halloween, it was natural for the studios to further his transformation into a wisecracking anti-hero. After all, the point of these films was not to win awards or critical respect. They were made to be cost-efficient. And God knows they were. With a net profit of around 65M$, Dream Master is not the most cost-efficient entry in the series (this title will forever remain in the hands of the original, which took film audiences by storm), but it is the most lucrative. All the more reason to turn out another lame entry the following year, when Freddy's popularity came to a screeching halt, forcing New Line to introduce a 3D sequence and try to flesh out Freddy's character in order to try and sell #6. But as it stands, despite its overall suckiness, #4 may well be considered to be the pinnacle of the dream killer's career. Shame...

1,5/5 Not as bad as #2, but still pretty bad.

(1) A note to the screenwriters: straight-A students never lose sleep over their studies, especially at high school level, because they are organized and know how to efficiently spend their time. Only bad students will do all-nighters, and that's because they should've started studying earlier in the first place.

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Review #0026

First of all, I must stress how terrible I think this poster is. Granted, the title is better than Killer Sharkz, White Terror or MegaJaws, but with a poster like this, you'd still think the film was a straight-to-video Jaws rip-off. For starters, the tagline sucks. Why? Because saying a shark is big, smart, fast and mean doesn't make it one bit more terrifying than any other Hollywoodian sharks, which all share these specific attributes. And smarts is pretty hard to evaluate in such a creature, let alone convey through a script without turning it into a farce. Secondly, the quality of the shark image is awful. It is blurry and unconvincing, as if an underwater shot of the creature had been taken from the film and superimposed behind the photo of a girl in a whirlpool. Never could anyone believe this shark is actually threatening this girl (who sports more of an annoyed expression than a terrified one). Finally, there is the girl herself. Who is this, exactly? The answer (drumroll...): 27 year-old TV actress Saffron Burrows! Who? You know, the girl who played Andromache in Troy! In here, she represents a huge casting mistake. You see, we are actually supposed to believe that this 27 year-old girl is a medical doctor spearheading a billion-dollar alzheimer research project, and whose forty-something father was taken away by said disease. It's an even bigger stretch to believe this load of bullshit than it is to believe in genetically-enhanced super-sharks. On with Miss Burrows; although she is somewhat good-looking (her pink lips are nice, as well as her wet breasts) I think it was ill-advised to frame her alone in this poster, especially since no star names are even mentioned. Burrows' appeal is almost nil as a star, and so, I wonder if they relied on her only for sex-appeal... And if they did, why not also include buffed-up Thomas Jane in there? A total failure, this poster. But here is a really great one. Just look at this:

The Unborn is a poverty-row film in comparaison with Deep Blue Sea, yet it manages to entice the viewer tenfold with its (international) poster. It does so with simple things. First, by exploiting the film's primary asset outright. By "primary asset", I obviously mean Odette Yustman's ass, which is something the average genre fan (a horny male teen) certainly likes to see. I know I do. But the poster does other things. It sports a nice, campy tagline (Evil will do anything to live), which, combined with the title, help us make sense of the scenario. It also shows us what kind of monsters to expect, and in what situations. And although you could fear a new Ju-on or Ringu rip-off from the images, at least you know there will be a beautiful ass to look at. Besides, if I had to choose between what looks like a grade-B shark-attack yawner and what looks like an exploitative, old-school ghost story, I would undoubtedly choose the latter.

Ok, now on with the review!

I first saw Deep Blue Sea as a teenager, and I remember liking it quite a bit. So yesterday, I bought a VHS copy of the film for a buck, thinking I could enjoy it again. But I didn't. Not one bit. I couldn't finish it actually; I was so bored that I turned it off and went to bed. I had to watch the final twenty minutes this morning before I started writing this review. Why did I like it as a teenager, and not now? Because I was candid back then, and eager to swallow a bucket of shit, as long as there were some cheap thrills and cheap laughs in it. Hell, back then I even thought that Sam Jackson's demise halfway was a brilliant plot twist! The truth is I have reviewed Shozin Fukui's Rubber's Lover a few days back, and was struck by the stunning similarities between the two films' premises, and thus underwhelmed by Deep Blue Sea's lackluster execution.

As I mentionned above, Saffron Burrows is the head of a pharmaceutical research group operating from Aquatica, a huge underwater facility surrounded by shark pools and titanium fences. Unfortunately for her (and her ex-con shark handler Tom Jane), the corporate sponsor funding the research has decided to shut her down, sending an executive (Sam Jackson) to oversee the operation. Now the team has a scant weekend to impress said executive so he will leave them be. During that time, the test sharks escape, terrorizing the crew who must find a way to reach the surface. It's basically Rubber's Lover with sharks instead of noise machines, but without either its zany madness, perfect rhythm, or intriguing photography. Like in most Hollywood films, tension is obtained by cranking the volume to dizzying heights, or by having charaters yell: "Watch out!" All the situations are formulaic and interchangeable, leaving a lot to be desired.

The film opens with a rather savvy sequence wherein two couples of kids are attacked by a shark, but then saved by Thomas Jane's character. It's a play on expectations where we wrongly figure the kids to be fish food. The film thus mocks the teenage slasher sub-genre, positing itself de facto as something of a nobler nature. But it also reveals the identity crisis at the core of the entreprise. Deep Blue Sea is a straight shark-attack film featuring rows of teeth and mangled bodies, but it is also an Alien-type "trapped with the beast" caper that relies heavily on the conventions of space horror. And although such hybridity sometimes forces some slightly novel situations (such as the stretcher-throwing sequence), it condemns the film to ineffectiveness. The reason lies with the shark, and its inability to pursue the characters above ground. Every sequence that is not underwater is devoid of tension, which forces the screenwriters to find all sorts of incongruous reasons why the characters need to be submerged (such as design flaws in a mutli-million dollars research facility). But what's worse is that despite the apparent originality of the premise, no situation in the film seems novel. Not one segment has a personality of its own.

Razzie-nominated director Renny Harlin, who could be said (in some quarters) to have ruined both the Nightmare on Elm Street and Die Hard series, the man at the helm of Cutthroat Island, the greatest fiasco in Hollywood history, does a purely functional, albeit acceptable job here. The underwater sequences are okay, the gore is okay (what happens to Jim and Tom is particularly cool), there is some gratuitous nudity, the acting is average (save for Rapaport who's great as usual in a subdued comedic role), but in the end, it is the lack of an edge in any department that prevents the film from ever lifting up. It's déjà-vu the whole way through, in the bland exchanges between the bland characters as well as in all sorts of familiar situations lazily patched together. There is even the tokenest of token black guys played by none other than rapper LL Cool J (Ladies Love Cool James for those unfamiliar with the Def Jam artist). And he doesn't die! I'm sure it was a great relief to the black community...

2/5 : for failing to make something other than formulaic drivel out of a good premise.