Wes Craven's New Nightmare

I know that I already had stated this in my past reviews, but “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare,” released in 1994, comes with Freddy’s past history. When he was first conceived in the 1984 original, Freddy Kruegar was the new killer in the slasher genre. Before him were Leatherface from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Michael Myers from “Halloween,” Jason Voorhees from “Friday the 13^th,” and other efficient, famous slasher villains of the late seventies and early eighties, but unlike every one of those silent slashers, Freddy spoke and was one of the best villains – and by invading nightmares, he really got into the heads of the teenagers.

However, five sequels later and Freddy was the franchise was over – something that his last movie clearly said in its title “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.” Anton Bitel said in his review, “By then, surprise had become schtick, invention had turned to gimmick, and Freddy, far from inspiring genuine fear, had become little more than a comedy villain, dispensing corny one-liners as he dispatched his victims in ever more carnivalesque ways. Freddy’s demise has run in parallel with the state of the horror genre, which has, for much of this decade, been parlous at best. Might this new nightmare be a sign of horror’s resurrection, and a fresh direction for the moribund genre?”

Bitel continued, “The opening shot of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare shows the burn-scarred Freddy smithing his blade-fingered glove beside a familiar furnace, before chopping off his own hand to accommodate this claw.” So far, it’s the same thing – until the camera shows director Wes Craven, his cast and crew filming the scene on a studio film set. The film’s complete title shows not only Craven’s return to his own film creation, but also his active role in it, playing himself as both writer and director of a film whose own creation it is subject. Suddenly the animatronic claw prop malfunctions, killing two of the special effects men (Matt Winston and Rob LaBelle) – only for Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy in the first and third movies (but here plays herself), to wake up in her LA bed. Also, John Saxon is back in this one. Bitel said, “The killer glove, you see, was all just a nightmare, from which Heather was roused by an earthquake – a common enough local phenomenon that exposes to Californians their hidden infernal foundations. And so, in this opening sequence, Craven sets up a close interplay between dreams, cinema and reality, in the very Hollywood milieu where those three categories are most easily confused.” This is not in any way like the previous movies, seeing how it doesn’t take place on Elm Street.

Hunted by a hateful caller (who sounds exactly like Freddy), also with a family history of insanity, and constantly having Freddy nightmares, Heather is already having high anxiety when she is invited to return to the franchise that made her famous for being scared. When her husband Chase (David Newsom) is killed in a car accident while working on a prop for the film, Heahter and her young son Dylan (Miko Hughes from “Full House”) become convinced that Freddy – or something like him – is back, and trying to come back to the real world. Bitel asked, “Is this a shared fantasy with which mother and son are working through their grief? Or an ancient evil emerging through a seismic rift, in a guise borrowed from the collective unconscious that the Elm Street franchise has helped inform? Or is it just a horror script being realised before our very eyes, to bring circular closure to Craven’s own particular preoccupations?”

After that can be a repeat of many memorable parts from the original movie: a tongue coming out of the telephone, Heather’s hair turning grey, Dylan’s babysitter Julie, played by Tracy Middendorf, being dragged across the doctor’s ceiling in blood, stairs turning to mud, Freddy’s arms stretching unusually. Bitel said, “Yet even as Freddy is overtly acknowledged as an iconic movie monster – and Englund (playing himself playing Freddy) is shown hamming it up before his adoring fanbase on a TV chat show – not only does this film’s new Freddy look different, but he is figured as a mere incarnation of the same timeless evil also instantiated by fairytale witches or Biblical demons. Newly psychologised, theologised and mythologised, he is the meta-bogeyman on whom Craven can hang all manner of enquiries about what horror is, what impact it has, and what purpose it serves.” The film also gives a sneaky look of its own now fixed franchise, a decade on when everyone involved – actors, creators and audiences alike – are now older and wiser.

Bitel ended his review by saying, “If this sort of postmodernism catches on, then I know what even the most jaded horror fans will be doing next summer: happily returning to the cinema to see films that once again make them scream…”

This movie is almost as good as the first and third movies, so if you loved those a lot, then you will definitely love this one. I liked how it did something different instead of redoing the same stuff again. What’s best is the look they give Freddy in this movie, which is actually much creepier than in the first movie. If you hadn’t been impressed by the sequels after three, this one will get you pumped again. If this was going to be the last of the franchise, I would have been happy with it.

However, this was not the final installment. Look out tomorrow when we look at a good crossover in “Elm Street-a-thon” that people may not have liked, but I thought was really good and definitely worth looking at. Check in tomorrow when I tell you what I mean in “Halloween Month.”