If it’s at all possible, Danielle Harris is much much better here than she was in Part 4 – unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the movie as a whole, though the ending, again, is fantastically cliffhanger-ish. As before, I kinda said all I need to say in the older review. I watched this so recently it was kinda just background this time around.

26th August, 2006:

This is actually sort of classy for 1989, although, like Part 4, it kinda goes on and on a bit towards the end. It doesn’t matter to me, though. Part 5 of an increasingly dodgy horror franchise (at least, at this stage of its existence) is the last place I personally expected find a great child performance (okay, the little guy in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is noteworthy), but Danielle Harris is even better here than she was in Part 4. I’d even go so far as to say it’s one of the best young performances I’ve seen, at least one of the most surprising. Donald Pleasance is back too, of course.

I’m kinda amazed most of these sequels seem to have passed me by. I guess it was learning of how much Part 3 was a non-sequel, just kinda put me off the others, aside from the awesome H20. It is also one of the rare horror movies to feature an element I personally find surprisingly effective in horror (the only other instance I can think of right now being Last House on the Left): the comedy cop …

“Somebody could be dead right now!”
“Fortunately we’re lousy cops!”

Bottom line, it’s worth watching. At least, more worth watching than I’ve expected all these years, and it doesn’t put me off keeping my eye out for part 6.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 11:30 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as cuties, horror, sequel, slasher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.