Review by Patrick Samuel
Suffer the Children (Nightmare on Elm Street)
Black Flame Publishing
Mass Market Paperback
Having long been a fan of the Nightmare series, I was keen to pick up a copy of this paperback novel and catch up on what the Springwood Slasher had been up to recently.
What I found was that Suffer The Children was rather like a mixed bag of sweets; some are great but other bits were just a bit off. The opening dream sequence is a bit weak could have been beefed up with more nightmarish sequences while it introduces us to the story’s protagonist, Alexandra; a teenage girl who just moved to Springwood with her mother and of course, 1428 Elm Street’s latest resident. As Alex tries her best to settle into Springwood High and go unnoticed, she reluctantly draws the attention of geeky Peter, goth Kat and star athlete Chris when they are all held back for detention together with prom queen wannabe Heather and stoner Lloyd.
Discovering they all share a common boned – their nightmares – they decide to take part in a drug trial which ends with Lloyd ripping off most of his face and remaining in a coma for most of the story.
Their exposure to an experimental drug allows Freddy to invade all of their dreams somehow omnipotently via Lloyd’s comatose state, blurring the lines between reality and the dream world. The group also gain powers such as telekinesis and telepathy which they can use outside of their dreams as well, but soon realise their gifts are from Freddy as he toys with them, tempting them to their dark sides where they use their powers for gain and for evil, with him eventually picking them off one by one.
At times the pace is slow, with the dialogue and characters coming off as extremely cliché and tiresome. It’s very hard to care about the characters when they are so one-sided. Often the banter between Freddy and his potential victims is too long and you get a sense that the writer isn’t really sure of what a killer and victim would have to talk about and does his best to laden it with one-liners back and forth. The descriptions of how people react to the pain that Freddy inflicts is repetitive (they are always ‘howling in pain’) and they story plays Freddy as a sexually motivated killer which steps away from what we really know of his motivations as a dream killer in the movies; it’s the souls of the children.
The climax is flawed and disappointing. There is no battle with Freddy to leave the reader exhilarated as with past novels. The epilogue, in its attempt to wrap up all loose ends and give that one final shock leaves more questions than answers. On a good note, there are some excellent killings (involving tattoos and some serious gutting and skinning) and clever inclusions in the story, such as Freddy being admitted to a burns unit at Springwood hospital during the final hours of his life after the parents torched him, but all in all, a disappointing inclusion to the Elm Street novels as whole.
Total score: 6/10
