Now that the Nightmare on Elmstreet films are over and Freddy is dead, the people who made the films, including actress Heather Langenkamp, actor Robert Englund, and director Wes Craven (all playing themselves) are having nightmares of a darker Freddy. When Heather’s son begins acting strangely and people die, she realizes that Freddy Kreuger is real and coming after her.
Much is made of Scream‘s self-referential nature, but films that acknowledge that they are films are nothing new. Bob Hope comedies did it over and over again. The Last Action Hero played with being a stereotypical action picture as well as an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. And two years before Craven made Scream, he created the modern horror, self-aware film. With the Elmstreet franchise long devoid of anything worthwhile, it was a clever move that could have produced a boring farce, but didn’t. New Nightmare is the first smart film in the series since the original, and it is the best acted and directed of them all (including the original). The production values are way up with believable dream world sequences. Additionally, Craven has a theme, although it isn’t what many critics claim. I’ve seen written over and over that in New Nightmare, Craven is suggesting that horror films may have negative consequences on young viewers; actually he is saying the opposite. Yes, that position is mentioned, by characters who lack any perspective on what is happening. Their questions lead to trouble and death. Instead, Craven is saying that there are real things out there that are frightening, but if we discuss them in our art, if we make fables out of them (as humans have done for millennia), then we can tackle them without fear numbing our actions; that is the value of horror pictures. It’s an interesting point, and one worth considering.
While New Nightmare demonstrated that something could be done with the dying series, not everything works. The doctors are an irritation (if a kid who was showing only psychological problems suddenly needed an oxygen tent, the hospital would call the mother). Plus, the time spent dealing with those meddling doctors is too long considering how trivial they are when compared to a dream killer with blades. And the great battle in the dream world could have fit into any Freddy movie; Heather uses none of her knowledge of the film franchise and Freddy is unaccountably weak. Still, the film is a standout among Slashers. It is also known as Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.