Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

HBO On Demand, Seattle, WA

May 04, 2008

*** 1/2 / ****

by Scott Muoio

One of the great cinematic let downs is discovering at the end of a film that everything that came before it was only a dream. That sort of lousy end tying is surely the laziest form of cinematic resolution and definitely the most disappointing. However, the “dream within a dream” scenario, with its added layer of hyper-reality, is exactly the opposite. When done right, the dream within a dream scenario can be just the sort of shot in the arm a story needs to take it from pat to complex, dazzling us by cleverly opening an entirely new perspective. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, the very first self-conscious, self-referential movie within a movie is the grand daddy of the modern dream within a dream and a terrific example of a nimbly written, intelligent horror movie every horror fan should see.

The plot of New Nightmare takes its cues from the original Nightmare on Elm Street employing many of the same actors; only this time they play the role of their real life selves. Heather Langenkamp, who played heroine Nancy in the original film, returns to the screen for the first time since that film. After having nightmares about that bastard son of a thousand maniacs, Freddy Kreuger, the creepy supernatural murderer who kills people in their dreams, Heather is enticed by Wes Craven, the writer and director of the original, to star in a new Nightmare installment. As she weighs the plusses and minuses of acting again, Heather slowly discovers that Freddy has evolved out of the films and into her real life. Fantasy blurs with reality as an earthquake, prank calls, a demented child, and real life deaths ape a screenplay Craven is working on. As the movie barrels to its sinister conclusion we are left scrambling to discover if what happens is real or, as they say, just a dream.

Wes Craven’s Scream may have been the film to rejuvenate the horror genre with its in-jokes and self-referential winks, but New Nightmare was the film that provided the template. Clever, entertaining, and spine tingling, New Nightmare is one of the best Freddy Kreuger entries and a landmark in the horror genre. Single-handedly, New Nightmare created a new species of horror film and did it by connecting the past with the present, rewriting the rules for horror films in the process.

Other horror films may be scarier, creepier, more bloody, more gruesome, and more surprising than New Nightmare, but few take as many chances or employ so many clever embellishments. No doubt, New Nightmare is a landmark film that deserves a high place on the horror film totem.