31 (or so) Days of Terror: Wes Craven's New Nightmare

It was sad news this week when it was announced that Wes Craven, one of the most famous horror directors of our time, passed away at the age of 79. Craven is just another in a long list of genre icons we've lost this year and while his oeuvre includes more than a few clunkers, there is no denying the impact he's made on the horror genre with films like The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. To honor his passing, I'm going to take a look at one of Craven's best-regarded films and the one that at least in my opinion, best expresses his philosophy toward horror. It's also the film where he made his last statement on probably his most famous creation Freddy Krueger, Wes Craven's New Nightmare.

New Nightmare is actually something a strange movie because of its self-aware nature, but it is that very meta approach that informs its theme and makes it such a unique film. To wit, New Nightmare stars original Nightmare star Heather Langenkamp as... original Nightmare star Heather Langenkamp who has moved on from her scream queen days with her young son and FX artist husband. Her Hollywood life is being disrupted by some sinister phone calls from what she thinks is a Freddy-obsessed stalker, a string of earthquakes wrecking her house, and horrible nightmares. Heather would like nothing more than to forget Freddy Krueger and all the weird things happening to her until she learns that Wes Craven is working on the script for a new Nightmare movie that oddly resembles her own recent troubles. As things get increasingly worse, it becomes clearer that whatever is happening to her is far more supernatural and Freddy-looking than she thought but given her connection to the razor-fingered boogieman, everyone around her thinks she's just having a nervous breakdown. With her son and sanity in danger, Heather is forced to ask herself whether Freddy could be more than a character in a movie.

Robert Englund as himself in Freddy makeup,
before his adoring public.

Yeah, it's really meta. It's a Nightmare on Elm Street movie about Nightmare on Elm Street movies. But Craven isn't using that meta nature to be self-congradulatory or pretentious. He's using it to make a point about the kinds of slasher movies he was known for making and make the audience think about them and horror stories in general on a deeper level. This is the reason he went back to Freddy Krueger in the first place. Some historical context is required to understand why this was a smart move on Craven's part and how it works into his grander theme. See New Nightmare came out in 1994, three years after the previous Nightmare film which ended with Freddy's definitive death. I mean it was called Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. And by that point in time, Freddy Krueger had gone from causing literal nightmares to an overexposed caricature. He proudly made bad jokes and his kills became evermore cartoony. There were comedy rap songs about him, you could buy his glove in any Spirit Halloween store, and there were probably even action figures of him. Basically, Freddy wasn't scary anymore.  Craven was aware of this and used making Freddy scary again the narrative thrust of his movie and tied it into his broader theme.

And if making Freddy scary again was one of New Nightmare's goals, then it pulled that off with flare. Played by Robert Englund once more (who also appears as himself like everyone else), Freddy is pretty chilling and Englund using his real higher voice instead of the artificially deepened one the last few films had used fits the character so much better. The film brought Freddy back to his roots by understanding that he isn't someone you're supposed to like or laugh with. He's a bully who mocks people before he kills them and gets off on their fear. But what really makes Freddy scary is how little we actually see him throughout the film until the climax. He's suggested throughout, most often through the pattern of claw marks, and even during a kill we usually don't see much more than his claw. And by suggesting Freddy more than showing him, he becomes a constant presence haunting the film.

Robert Englund as Freddy,
ready to claim another victim.

That would be enough to make New Nightmare a good horror flick, but Craven aims for more than that. He uses his once more frightening Freddy to make his bigger point about horror stories. He himself lays this point out in a scene where he explains what's going on to Heather. In the reality of the film, Freddy is the current incarnation of an ancient entity that preys on human lives. This entity can be captured in stories though, which is what Craven did with the original Nightmare movie. But because of all the sequels and popularity of the Freddy character, the story's power has been weakened and the entity (still in its Freddy guise) is escaping into the real world once again. And it's here we arrive at Craven's philosophy toward horror stories.

For Craven, horror stories are not about inducing fear in the audience. They're actually about the opposite, releasing fear. See Wes Craven was raised in a strictly fundamentalist Christian home where movies were totally banned and the world was inherently sinful. So he began from the idea that people were already afraid when they went into the story. Maybe not on a visceral level, but subconsciously they had repressed their fear. By going to a horror movie, the audience was confronted with their repressed fear and by confronting it could come to terms with what they were afraid of and process it in a healthy way. In New Nightmare, Craven links modern horror movies with fairy tales as they serve much the same function as fairy tales did, He connects Freddy, and by extension modern movie slashers, with figures such as the witch in Hansel & Gretel and shows they can be beaten in the same way. Essentially, Craven's philosophy of horror expressed through New Nightmare can be summed up in this famous quote from G.K. Chesterton:

"Fairy Tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy Tales tell children that dragons can be killed."

Heather Langenkamp as herself,
trapped in Freddy's hell world.

One last thing before I finish. People have often called New Nightmare a dress-rehearsal for Scream, which would be Craven's next film after this one. I understand why people say that, Scream took a similarly meta and deconstructive approach to horror movies but went much further with it, but it's not an assessment I particularly agree with. I found New Nightmare to be the stronger film, mostly because Craven used the meta-setup of being about making a Nightmare on Elm Street movie to make a broader, thematic point about horror and to re-energize one of its most iconic villains. Scream used its meta nature as more of a gimmick and it always felt a little smug about its deconstruction, as though it was too good for the movies it was mocking even though it was one of those movies. That sort of fits for its adolescent characters, but doesn't make for as rich an experience. It's also not as scary as New Nightmare.

There will be a lot written about Wes Craven and his films in the weeks and years to come. Not every movie he made was a classic but they were always interesting. And while you can't go wrong with Red Eye, probably his last great film, or even the original Nightmare, I would suggest people seek out New Nightmare. It's a slightly uneven film, it gets a little repetitive in the second half and the child actor playing Heather's son is unreasonably grating, but it's probably among the director's more personal.  It's a thinking man's slasher movie with a rich thematic undertone. If you want to know Craven's thoughts on the genre he became so connected with, look no further.