So we come to it at last. Wes Craven making his triumphant return to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise after Dream Warriors, where he had said he was done with the series entirely, having intended for it to be the last entry.
As history shows, I believe "oops" is the correct term for what happened.
But after the disappointing fan and critic reaction to Freddy's Dead, New Line Cinema apparently decided they needed to shift gears. Wes Craven was brought back in, pitching an idea that he had tried to do for Dream Warriors, but had been rejected then. What was the idea? Freddy Krueger crosses over into the real world to menace the actors during the filming of a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
Overall, it was a pretty awesome idea! New Line Cinema had rejected it at the time for being too cerebral, though it seems after breaking both of their legs when trying to keep the franchise afloat, they were far more receptive to his idea. So, Craven got to work.
So, you might expect a horrendously meta-fictional story that takes jabs at the Nightmare franchise, but this was A) long before that became something that would be in vogue and B) isn't remotely as annoying as later attempts. We'll likely be getting to those at another date.
Our film begins with Heather Langenkamp (played by... Heather Langenkamp) living in LA with her husband Chase (David Newsom) and her son Dylan (Miko Hughes), trying to make a career in television while seemingly being stuck being remembered as Nancy Thompson from the original Nightmare on Elm Street film. She even gets invited by New Line Cinemas own Robert Shaye (played by... himself...) to get into the definitive Nightmare on Elm Street film alongside her former co-star Robert Englund (played by... look, you get the picture, the real people play the real people here, that's the gimmick).
However, things start to get strange after an earthquake. Her son, Dylan, watches the original Nightmare film and begins to actively fear sleeping and behaves rather strangely while awake, even reciting the little nursery rhyme that Freddy is associated with. Couple this with strange phone calls from a stalker that Heather has been receiving and it's clear that something... sinister... is going on.
So what's the deal? A meeting with Wes Craven reveals the truth - "Freddy" is nothing more than an entity that has been trapped by the creation of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. With no new movies being made, however, it's been freed and is now trying to get into the real world, latching onto Heather as Nancy as his nemesis. As the reality she knows and the reality of the films begin to collide, Heather must embrace the role of Nancy Thompson one last time to save herself, save her son, and save the world from Freddy Krueger.
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| Yeah, yeah, we did. |
This film is magnificent. I really can't say anything bad about it at all, which should come as a shock to anyone who has been following these reviews since I did Dream Master way back when. Rachel Talalay, the producer of Dream Master and director of Freddy's Dead had once been quoted as saying that Freddy had become too familiar with audiences to be scary anymore.
Wes Craven, it seems, disagreed. Along with an updated look that goes less for burn victim and more for full on demonic entity, Freddy isn't a jokester in this film like he'd been in previous entities. In a return to how he was in the original and in Freddy's Revenge - dark, menacing, and a being of pure and utter evil. His first words on screen - "Miss me?" - are almost an exact declaration as if saying that, yes, Freddy is back for real this time!
The return, too, comes from various actors from the Nightmare franchise. John Saxon appears once more as both himself and as Nancy's father as reality begins to break down (and John Saxon is always awesome, period). There's also some cameos by other actors from the franchise from pretty much every entry except for Freddy's Revenge (a terrible oversight, honestly) and one notable exception in no Johnny Depp despite him having played Nancy's boyfriend Glen in the original.
The story goes that Wes Craven wanted to approach him about a cameo, but was too intimidated by the fame that Johnny had garnered since appearing in the first movie to do so. After the movie had premiered, though, it is said that Johnny had told Wes that he would have been happy to do it in a sad case of What Might Have Been. Not that Johnny likely would have had a large role or anything, but it is important to note.
So the film is actually solid, we have great performances by the entire cast particularly by those that do double duty as both "themselves" and their characters, and the film is actually scary without being ridiculously comedic or over the top like entries 4-6. And, of course, the general public and the critics embraced this and the Nightmare films went in an exciting new direction tha-yeah, no, none of that actually happened. Critics did like it, which is surprising for a slasher film, but the film is still the lowest grossing film of the Nightmare franchise at the time I'm writing this review in August of 2022.
I cannot tell you how disappointed I am in 1994 audiences.
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| Aww, see... they try to murder each other, but they're friends. |
In many ways, this was not only Wes Craven closing the book on the Nightmare franchise (for himself, anyway, we still have at least one more movie to go) but it was also a precursor to the Scream series - which I think we're going to start covering very soon indeed - in being a meta horror film, that is a film that is in the same genre while picking apart and analyzing different facets of said genre. Just enough grounding to avoid being a straight up parody, but with the tongue firmly in the cheek in several instances.
New Nightmare definitely has the tongue firmly in the cheek... and has already bitten right through it for the fun of it. It's a good film. If you're a fan of 4-6, you may not enjoy this one so much... but then you don't enjoy the good Nightmare films anyway, so it's not that much of a surprise.
If you do enjoy Freddy Krueger actually being scary, go for this film. Trust me, you can do a lot worse.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare is brought to us by New Line Cinema.
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