A significant improvement over the second entry in the series, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is almost good. Unlike the second episode, this one has a storyline in which the characters act (mostly) rationally under the circumstances. They try to do something about their nightmares, which is something I liked about the first. Experimenting further with the premise of a supernatural killer who can kill in people's dreams, one character is kind of a psychic and can "pull" other people into her dreams. It's a stretch but a neat twist; alas, not much is done with that, and when the movie uses that as an excuse for group dreams, whether it follows the rules set forth or not, it kind of lost me.

On the down side, this third episode falls into a lot of the same traps as did the second, though not quite so severely. There's too much emphasis on making supernatural stuff happen and not enough time spent on building a frightening atmosphere and driving the terror of the situation home. Some of the moments work. I liked the movie's uses of a tricycle and water faucets, for example. And I liked one scene in which that frequent dream restriction of not being able to run fast came into play. But for the most part, the supernatural stuff is not effective. There's a lot of it, and that makes a lot of movie that doesn't work.

The other problem is inherent in being the third of a series. After the first two films, Freddy is too much of a known quantity and is therefore more of an icon than an agent of horror. Seeing him poke out of television sets and jump out of mirrors doesn't incite much of a reaction, and it doesn't help that he's no longer filmed in shadow. Nevertheless, there are some neat effects to go along with the bad, particularly those that have to do with his burial.