3 out of 5

Directed by: Renny Harlin

Directed by overkill king Renny Harlin.  A main character played by a different actress.  A convenient lack of mention of Nancy.  While NoES 2 definitely rang a bit of desperation in its attempts to find a way to expand the story, NoES 4 is the first sequel to officially feel like the run-of-the-mill you expect from seasonal horror followups.  However, credit to Renny – his melodramatic style works pretty well with the campy nature of horror, and he keeps his slo-mo in check.  The effects / kills aren’t quite as inventive as part 3, but they’re still an improvement over part 2, and some new concepts and more out-there gags continually stack up (the cockroach-morphing…?  Fire-pissing dogs?) to keep the flick entertaining.  Plus – pretty epic Freddy kill, still allowing time for a passable few minutes outro sequence that 2 and 3 lacked.

But as it begins… we’re back with Kristen and the dream team, though Tuesday Knight has replaced Arquette in the role.  Things are apparently all hunky dory in Elm Street land again, until Kristen’s dreams start back up.  She reaches out to school chum Alice (Lisa Wilcox) for advice, who has a method of becoming one’s own ‘Dream Master’… but alas, the remaining Streeters are knocked off in their dreams by the returned Kruger (damn you unreliable consecrated ground!) before this advice can really be explained or put to use.  But Alice, pulled into Kristen’s final dream, absorbs Kristen’s soul… and thus her dream-sucking powers.  As Freddy works his way through the rest of the cast (moving us outside of the ‘original Elm Streeters’ realm, mind you), apparently part of the Dream Master gig is absorbing souls of the dead, turning Alice into Super-Alice, with the smarts of friend 1 and the karate powers of friend 2 and the studded bracelet of friend 3.  Using all of these kicking powers plus the recollection of that advice Kristen’s could’ve used (biiitch), Alice gives Freddy a pretty awesomely gruesome smackdown.  It’s all a little goofy and 80s-tastic, but ‘Dream Master’ is reveling in it, giving Freddy plenty of scenery-chewing one-liners and staying honest with our main crew so we don’t have to get sidetracked in any extra drama.

Absolutely a sequel, but a pretty solid one that stays true to the series while giving us some new material.