Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
I think I watched the beginning of “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2” shortly after seeing the first one for the first time- it was on a VHS recorded off of HBO- but I never kept up with the series the same way that I did the “Friday the 13th” series. So I haven’t seen all of the sequels for Freddy, save for “Dream Warriors” (considered one of the better sequels), and 1994’s “New Nightmare.” (I’m not including “Freddy vs. Jason,” but I have seen that one, as well.) I’ll get to the rest at some point, but the highs are so strong for Freddy, I’m really not looking forward to the lows.
“New Nightmare” represented the ending of Wes Craven’s time with Freddy Kreuger, as well as the writer-director taking him back from the filmmakers who leaned into the sarcastic wit and, supposedly, defanged Craven’s creation. The Freddy in “New Nightmare” is, arguably, even scarier than he was in the 1984 original, and I think that’s Wes wanting to put a definitive bow on the character. There are a lot of call backs to that original nightmare, and the film is better for it. This film also points the way to the next franchise in Craven’s career, “Scream,” where he would comment on the genre he helped define. If that series has more staying power than the “Nightmare” series, it’s because Craven’s intelligent, self-aware humor is present the whole way through.
The film begins with an earthquake, as well as an anxiety dream for Heather Langenkamp. Not Nancy, but the actress herself. Her dream involves her on the set of a new “Nightmare” film, her husband is in the prop department, in charge of building a new Freddy glove and hand, and crew members die when the hand comes alive. Is it just a dream, though? Over the course of the film’s 112 minutes, Heather will be brought back into the world of Freddy, and this time, her son, Dylan (Miko Hughes) will join her.
There’s an extended sequence in the hospital, and then with Heather chasing Dylan, that doesn’t work that well in grounding the film in a reality, but the rest of the film is positively gangbusters. Craven choosing to form this new Freddy film as a movie about making a movie is an inspired choice, but it doesn’t hew completely to that form, and the reasons for the choice add to the mythology of the character. In “New Nightmare,” Craven created Freddy out of his nightmares, and his writing process on this new film is born out of that same idea. For him, Freddy is a representation of an old evil that Craven used the “Nightmare” films to keep from crossing over into the real world. This new film is his attempt to keep him in check, and he needs Heather to be able to do so. Having Heather’s anxieties come out of her need to protect her son is a familiar horror trope that works here because it not only gives us a connection with Heather as a character, but also sets up an extremely clever way into the final showdown with Freddy, played by the great Robert Englund (whom also appears as himself) at his most vicious.
This is a movie that makes you miss Wes Craven, gone since 2015. His intelligence and wit. His good nature. His creative energy. Freddy wasn’t the same without him, and neither is the horror genre. No one could do what he did quite as well. “New Nightmare” may be the most definitive example that he gave us.
