ELM 5, subtitled THE DREAM CHILD, returns to the origin-mythology elaborated in ELM 3, albeit with mixed results. The level of FX remains the same with director Stephen Hopkins and writer Leslie Bohem, but the story feels far more mechanical, as well as being saddled with what seem like clumsy "pro-life" statements in fantasy-getup.
It's possible that such sociopolitical statements could be intelligently realized elsewhere, but I found such sentiments out of place in the ELM STREET franchise. The notion of Krueger being spawned in the Christmas season is an incisive twist on the werewolf legend, and it's interesting that the nun who births him is yet another irresponsible parent, putting little Freddy up for adoption and thus indirectly contributing to his corrupted existence. But Bohem's script takes the opposite tack from Craven's original notion, in that Bohem places greater confidence in the adult authorities-- one of whom is Alice, who learns early on that she is an expectant mother, having been impregnated by Dan before he is killed by Freddy. In ELM 5's first thirty minutes, we even learn that Alice's hard-drinking father from ELM 4 has cleaned up his act, though this development has absolutely no impact on the plot.
That plot hinges on the notion that because Alice has blocked Freddy from manifesting the way he did before, he can only do so by entering the dreams of her unborn child. In itself this is a good angle, leading to several scenarios replete with "horrible-child" fantasies. It's even interesting that Bohem implies an equivalence between Freddy's opponent Alice and his mother Maria Helena, for in Alice's first two film-dreams she finds herself in the persona of the nun, first being attacked by the asylum-lunatics and then witnessing the obscene birth of Freddy from his mother. The latter dream isn't all that logical, though, for why should Freddy want Alice to know that he plans to merge with her unborn infant? Talk about the villain giving away all his plans to the hero in advance!
The "birth-horror" dream is a hotspot for the "pro-life/pro-choice" tensions, even though no one in the film speaks the word "abortion." The birth of "baby Freddy" is distorted in the dream, so that the infant looks like adult Freddy rather than a real baby. This causes one doctor in the dream to claim that the infant should be destroyed, while a female nurse-- also a nun-- asserts that it must be allowed to live because "it is a child of God." Though at the time of this dream Alice does not yet know that she is pregnant, but in essence these contrasting voices speak to her ambivalence as a mother, not just to carrying the reborn Freddy Krueger but any child. Later in other dreams Alice meets Jacob, a six-year-old who represents what her normal child will be. In the first dream Jacob does not know that Alice is his mother but he thinks Freddy is his friend; later he clearly understands their relationship and rails against Alice because "you didn't want me!" I realize that I may be accused of reading too much into a fantasy-horror film, but I can't help but see in these sentiments a real-world rejection of "the woman's freedom to choose."
After Freddy kills his first victim-- Dan, who would have been the "daddy" to the vessel of Freddy's rebirth-- he naturally continues to prey on other acquaintances of Alice's. Only one of these manages to muster a "dream power" like those displayed by the "dream warriors," and he's killed instantly. Alice never regains her ass-kicking powers from ELM 4, but only defeats the dream-demon with the help of Amanda Krueger's spirit.
Political content aside, there are a couple of interesting myth-motifs here. One is that when the Amanda-ghost absorbs the Freddy-ghost, she is last seen fighting to keep him inside her, though his claw-hand is seen cutting through her: a motif of "breaking the womb" seen in the Egyptian myth of Set. Another is the name given to Alice's child, for the name Jacob is sometimes translated to mean "supplanter" in keeping with the role of the Biblical character:
[Jacob] was born holding his twin brother Esau's heel, and his name is explained as meaning "holder of the heel" or "supplanter".Thus it seems Bohem was aware that Freddy was attempting to be the "supplanter" in relation to the living child Jacob, usurping the child's role as Bible-Jacob usurped the birthright of Esau. It's a shame that Bohem didn't focus his attention on this aspect of the birth-fantasy, which carries ample ambivalent aspects without the intrusion of personal politics.
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