This has been described as a Nightmare on Elm Street for adults, but at the risk of flattering the sporadic adolescent and insulting the common adult, it might be better to say a Nightmare on Elm Street for anyone for whom A Nightmare on Elm Street is not. Unlike that other movie (or movies), this one never cheats about the boundary between the dream world and the waking world; and the psychological logic of it (the dreamer has some conscious ambivalence about her father) renders it all the more disturbing: disturbing no matter whether asleep or awake. The progressive shaping of the dream, like an evolving work of art whose final form is suspensefully in doubt, is remindful of some of the supernatural tales of M.R. James; and the proselytizing for dream reality over waking reality is remindful of that surrealist pet, Peter Ibbetson (although ultimately this movie is a little repressed, a little leery of the grand romantic gesture). The visual style at times betrays the music-video background of first-time director Bernard Rose (a roomful of candles where one or two would have been plenty), but the sets, mixing Caligari with Hansel and Gretel, are bizarrely agreeable. Charlotte Burke, Ben Cross, Glenne Headly, Gemma Jones. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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