This 1988 fourth installment in the franchise gets a lot of stuff right but makes enough crucial missteps to make it markedly worse than the first and third films in the series.
The things it gets right: we have another direct sequel here. Instead of pretending part 3 never happened, this movie looks and feels like an immediate follow up to the well-regarded 3rd one, and even carries on with some of the main characters. Big time action director Renny Harlin is on board, so the whole thing looks beautiful. The special effects are amazing for the time. The script is competent, possibly thanks to co-writer Brian Helgeland who went on to write stuff like L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and MYSTIC RIVER.
The biggest problem is that, although the movie stars the character Patricia Arquette created in the 3rd movie, Arquette has been recast with Tuesday Knight who is quickly dispatched and replaced with Lisa Wilcox. Wilcox is perfectly fine, but it's hard to follow in the steps of a super talent with great presence like Arquette.
Next, we almost instantly lose the super memorable character from part 3 played by Ken Sagoes. So I went from super happy that he was in the flick to super sad that he was instantly killed off (though his death scene was memorable). In fact, it's kind of depressing to go from the totally likable group of teens from part 3 to a B-team of less likable teens in part 4.
Appropriately, Robert Englund finally gets top billing in this flick after playing second fiddle to the teens 3 movies in a row. This movie, more than the previous ones, definitely allows Krueger to steal the show from the heroes, although here he has moved almost exclusively into the realm of over-the-top comedy and out of the realm of horror.
One interesting note is that this flick is kinda similar to Craven's later MY SOUL TO TAKE, which is notable only because Craven had nothing to do with this movie. Basically, Wilcox feels like she starts to take on aspects of her fallen comrades as the movie progresses and then she goes on to use these powers to battle the villain.
The final battle is a very cool sequence featuring superb (and gross) special effects, so while this movie doesn't quite reach the heights of the third one and is far from the greatness of the first one, it gets points for trying.
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