Quite a Sequel Saturday

 Sort of a list here:

• A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
• Halloween (1978)
• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: A Dream Child (1989)
• Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

I have talked the above a whole hell of a lot. These sequels as mentioned previously are because my daughter wanted to see them for the first time. So I recorded these from AMC and SYFY, and we spent Saturday all day watching them. I just don't seem to care for the Part 5's of franchises. They are often way down my franchise lists. "Halloween" so towers above the rest of these films to me, but my daughter actually liked "Halloween 4" the most of the Halloween films she watched. She told me the difference was because of Danielle Harris. My daughter really took to her. Tina in "Halloween 5" continues to fucking annoy me, as she does every year, but Michael in his victim's sweet ride wearing a mask Tina bought for her boyfriend is often not mentioned. I kind of find Michael being teased and kissed by Tina in the car, her having no clue that is not her boyfriend behind the mask as he grips the steering wheel, rather fascinating. My daughter really responded to the "child in peril" scenes where Michael pursued Jamie, especially with the car through the trees and forest. She really reacted as the filmmakers intended, because Jamie's terror was felt by my daughter. But Part 5 really drove home that Dr. Loomis is just gone. It was fascinating scanning the reviews on Letterboxd...a lot of people in the month of October found Part 5 boring and badly made. A ton of one star ratings or just above. Few good reviews or ratings for the film. It seems to remain polarizing among Halloween fans. I think the Youtube review community has been more positive. I think it might depend on nostalgia, age of viewer, if they grew up with it and had fonder memories of it than those perhaps watching it for the first time this year.

My daughter has now seen five out of the six Elm Street films. After watching the second and fifth films today, she actually told me her favorite of the Elm Street films was Part 2! She just really liked Jesse and found Freddy very scary in it. 

What I wrote on my Letterboxd account sums up a summary of my feelings for "The Dream Child: :

Fred as a burn baby birthed in a dream for Alice to see is wonderfully grotesque, the nightmare cathedral where he was vanquished in the previous film is rent apart, and her unborn child's dreams is how he returns to kill her friends. It is a *here we go again* scenario where I think you can see the fumes exhausted. There's plenty of rusty pipes, hanging chains, dirty water, decaying walls, boiler room aesthetic. My favorite setpieces include Fred being torn apart by the maniacs and Alice, in the form of Amanda, being surrounded by the aforementioned maniacs. Some fans love the Dan Motorcycle killpiece...it is imaginative, I'll give it that. I still think Wilcox shines even if the film is messy, the characters aren't altogether as memorable as previous entries, and overall the production feels quite rushed. I think the A-ha vibes of Mark's comic book setpiece might amuse. I dunno...Fred might be darker but he's just lacking the menace of the first two.