A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 - The Dream Master

The Dream Master is another good Elm Street film. The film is a direct sequel to The Dream Warriors. The survivors from The Dream Warriors are now in high school, pretty soon they are all killed off by a recently resurrected Freddy, but before the last one dies she transfers part of her soul into her friend Alice. Alice and her friends start to be terrorized by Freddy. She realise Freddy needs her to bring people into her dreams as she is the last link to Elm Street. She absorbs the powers of everyone Freddy kills, while he absorbs his victims souls which leads to a battle in the dream world between the two.

Yet again the deaths are a real highlight. From a victim having thier insides sucked out, to someone being turned into a human cockroach and then squished they are a treat to watch. Robert Englund is as good as always, and even turns up sans makeup as a cross dressing nurse in one of the scenes, heh. Freddy death scene is amazing, and probably the most visual highlight of the film.

Unlike other franchises Elm Street films never slipped into monotony, and kept on an even keel rather than get progressivly lower budget, and another hilariously bad 80's theme tune complete with a Kruger rap.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 - The Dream Warriors

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 - The Dream Warriors is a great film, and Elm Street at its best. A proper sequel to the first one it features the character Nancy now grown up and a dream specialist who gets a job at a childrens psychiatric hospital specialising in children with sleeping disorders. These include a recently admitted teen girl with physic powers, a disabled boy, a mute, a recovering drug addict among others. All the kids have been dreaming about the same scary man - Freddy Kruger, and are slowly one by one being killed off by him. Nancy knows they most confront him to stop his murdering rampage, and has to go against the wishes of the other hospital staff who see it all as a shared delusion. The psychic girl is able to pull others into her dreams, so they all go to her dreamworld and plan to use thier dream powers to stop Freddy.
Meanwhile Nancys Dr friend has teamed up with Nancys dad (another returning character) to locate Freddys remains and bury them in consecrated ground which they think will lay his spirit to rest.

The film is very entertaining, and features Freddy in more interesting guises within the dream world. He appears with syringes for fingers, as a giant worm, and even as a puppet. Again he kills people in ironic and entertaining ways, eg; the girl who wants nothing less than to be on TV has her head smashed into one. The special effects are quite good, with a bigger budget being apparant. Back story for Freddys parents is explained which adds more to how he turned out like he did. The characters are all interesting, and fun, though at times it bizarrly feels like a kids film despite being an 18.

The series came back on track with this film, a definate classic, and doesn't even feature a lame twist ending! My only complaint is that Freddy is supposed to be buried on consecrated ground, but he isn't, blatently, but that's a plot point that gets forgotten.

The Fourth Kind

Now this is how you make a scary film. The creepiest film I have seen all year. The film purports to be based on real events, Milla Jovovich introduces herself at the start and speaks to the viewers. She explains that along with the film there will be real footage and recordings from the event used, and that "viewers may find some scenes deeply disturbing".

The film is a sci-fi thriller. A recently widowed lady; Dr Abbey Tyler (whose husband was murdered next to her as she slept) has returned to her job as a psychiatrist in Nome, Alaska. Many of her patients are experiancing the same nightmare. They wake up at 3am to find an owl watching them through the bedroom window, but the owl is not an owl, they seemingly all have false memories. An Attempt to hypnotise a patient to discover what happened ends in tragedy. The chief of Police blames Abbey for creating panic in his towns people, and warns her against pursuing the strange cases. Then she discovers to her horror that a similar thing has unbeknown been happening to her as well at night. It sounds lame, but it is really creepy and unsettling.

The film is shot with a mix of 'real' archive footage and recreation footage. There are interviews with the real Abbey Tyler, recordings of psychiatry seesions with her patients, and police footage, as well as the film made based on these facts with Milla Jovovich playing Abbey Tyler. At times both footage is shown together, 24 style screen splits showing the acted scene, along with the actual real footage. The film at times feels very heavily like a Blair Witch Project if it had been filmed in a small Town rather than remote forest. All the tension of that film is recreated. It is often said that what is not shown, but implied can be more creepy than actually showing events. That is very true for this film. The whole carrot on a rod being what actually happens to these people is never implicitly revealed, or shown which makes it all the more creepy if your imagination is good.

The film did drag to begin with, it was a good 20 minutes before I could start to get into the film. The film keeps silent as long as it can on what is happening to these people visited by something strange at night, but the films title alone gives it away (not a spoiler to say it is a film about Alien abduction). I can't help feeling if they had kept the whole Alien angle a secret it would have been more effective. The best way to really get the most out of the film is to forget the 'real' footage is fake, made for the film, and instead let yourself to believe it is real, and that these events may have actually happened.

I enjoyed this. Well enjoy isn't the word, but as a piece of horror this really should give you goosebumps.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 - Freddy's Revenge

Freddy's Revenge is considered the weakest of the Elm Street films. I would agree. The film does something different to all the others, but is unsucessful.

A teenage boy and his family have moved into Elm Street. The boy gets frightening nightmares everytime he sleeps. He finds Nancys diary (the girl from Elm Street 1) and realises that he is dreaming about the same man. Soon he comes to the shocking realisation that Freddy is able to possess him when he sleeps, and make him kill people. This all leads to a internal battle by the boy and Freddy for control.

The film is different in that Freddy is actually out in the real world. As a result there are no inventive deaths as Freddy just kills with his claws for the most part, and also kills at random rather than for any rhyme or reason. Added to this is the fact that the boy is just unlikable, he spends most the film shouting at people and acting like a jerk to his friends. Some staples of the series come back, such as animals with human faces, and the obligitory dreadful twist ending.

Robert Englund of course is fab again, but thats about the only good thing about the film. Wes Craven had nothing to do with this film, and it shows. Ok, but not exactly good.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street is of course a classic. This is down to what I see as two factors. Firstly it is an original take on the slasher genre. Rather than taking place in reality the deaths in the Elm Street films take place in peoples dreams, the place where they are most vunerable. Secondly is of course the cult icon Freddy Kruger. A hidiously scarred child murderer, with his iconic brown trilby, green and red striped jumper, and of course the glove with those claws. Robert Englund plays the role with relish, and makes it totally his own. Unlike other slashers Freddy has personality, constantly wise cracking, and murdering people in ironic ways, and existing in the dream world makes him much harder to defeat.

Nightmare 1 is regarded by many as the best of the Elm Street films. A teenage girl and her friends are plagued by nightmares featuring a man in a stripy jumper, after they start dying off the girl realises its to do with thier dreams, but no one really believes her. After her boyfriend is violently killed in his sleep (the boyfriend played by Jonny Depp in his debut role) the girl decides she cant avoid sleeping anymore and must confront Freddy to end his reign of terror.

The film is still ace today as it was then. The deaths are quite spectacular at times (Jonny Depp getting sucked into his bed followed by a torrent of blood gushing out of it up to the ceiling is one of my fave death scenes ever), and the girls increasing madness due to sleep deprivation is hypnotic to watch. Krugers back story and motivation for the killings is interesting and original.

The film is not scary though, I remembered it as being so, but it wasn't. Also the bleak theme tune doesn't fit the style of film, and seems kind of out of place at times. Kinda a token thing in the series; the twist ending is abysmal and made the film end with a wimper. The film is a definate classic though!

Resident Evil Degeneration

Resident Evil: Degeneration is a Japan made CGI film set in the Resident Evil universe. It is an original canological story that takes place between the events of Resident Evil 4 and 5. The director states he sees it as a sequel to Resident Evil 2.

The film takes place 7 years after the 2nd game. There have been terrorist attacks using bio-weapons around the globe. The T-Virus now being on the black market following Umbrellas demise. An airport Claire Redfield has arrived at comes under terrorist attack cia the T-Virus which turns its victims into braindead flesh eating zombies. The airport is sealed off, and the Governments special agent for biological attacks - Leon Kennedy is called in. He teams up with a special forces woman, and Claire Redfield to stop the terrorist who is a survivor from the Raccoon City Incident (in which a T-Virus outbreak led to the government nuking the City) from getting his revenge on the people he saw as responsible.

There are two main sections to the film. First the initial Airport attack, and later on the 2nd set piece takes place at an ultra modern research facility where an antidote to the T-Virus has been created. The film is good, and looks quite good. The characters are all motion captured, so move fluidly, but crawl too much into the uncanny valley.

The plot just falls flat nearly right away. Theres no desire to find out the reasons for the attack, the characters are all boring, likeable enough, but not fantastic. Really it's just an action fest. There are zombies in the film, sure, but only in the first half, the 2nd half just features a battle with a G-Virus infected human (G-Virus turns the carrier into a mutant monster). A few nods to the games which is nice, but overall just kinda a bland film.

Jennifer's Body

I had a call before seeing this film yesterday. It was my sisters husband, weeping and pleading he told me not to see Jennifer's Body, he said it was awful and not worth seeing even for semi-free. I considered for a bit not going to the cinema, to take his advice, but then I thought that I probably had a far better taste in films than him, so went anyway.

The film is a teen horror set in a small American Town called 'Devils Kettle'. Jennifer is an attractive popular student, while her best friend Needy (that's what it seemed her name was) is a plain looking geek with thick glasses. Jennifer convinces Needy to go along to the Towns only Club to see a band from the City as she fancies the singer. But tragedy occurs when the Club burns down, killing countless members of the small Town community. Jennifer is taken off by the creepy band in thier van, leaving Needy. Jennifer later appears at Needys house, she is covered in blood, puking up black puke, and roaring inhumanly freaking Needy out. The next day at school Jennifer is back to her old self, but too much so. While everyone is grieving over the deaths Jennifer is fine and dismisses the whole disaster. Random students start being killed and partially eaten, Needy seems to have a psychic connection to the killer who is in fact Jennifer now seemingly sharing her body with a Demon.

Sounds lame from my boring plot description, but in fact the film is really quite good, something that was missing from the lame trailers for the flick. It starts off at the end of the film, then recaps to a earlier time to show how things got to that point which is a plot device I absolutly love in films, and in games in fact (eg: Brothers in Arms Route to Hill 1.0). The film is quite funny in places, and while some of the jokes are really awful mostly they are hit rather than miss.

There is a bit of blood in the film, not gallons, but a nice enough amount. The soundtrack is made up of popular teen bands (I assume) such as Panic at the Disco, and Fall Out Boy and as a whole the film is geared towards the teen crowd. The characters are all good looking, especially Megan Fox playing the part of Jennifer. No nudity, but some girl on girl action for those who like that sort of thing.

A fun, entertaining film which brought to mind The Faculty. Cool ending as well.