Alice Oscura, Featured Writer
Disclaimer: The following contains major spoilers, and a compilation of well-known facts posted in articles online and details from interviews gathered from the cast and crew of the film.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) is basically the main reason why I would always choose Wes Craven as my quintessential, all-time favourite horror director. The brilliance behind the premise of the film is how it manages to metaphorically breathe life back into a character and having him regain his demonic power through the idea of a script being written is totally marvelous. Three years had lapsed between Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), which was intended to be the final installment of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare film. However, the icing on the cake is that New Nightmare can also be thought of as a stand-alone film taking place outside the canon of the series, and yet it is still considered the seventh film of the franchise.
New Nightmare falls into a sub-genre known as meta-cinema, making it all the more fun for horror fans. The story is self-referential by acknowledging along with its audience that the characters are sentient and aware that the story they are involved in is within the realm of fiction. It’s a method of being straightforward with the audience by breaking the fourth wall and allowing the audience to enjoy the temporary stay in the fictional aspect of the film by making them virtual witnesses instead to the allegedly “real events” unfolding before their eyes.
As Wes Craven’s New Nightmare turns 30-years old, let’s take a look back at the horror that broke the quintessential mold. The film allowed Wes Craven to regain control over Freddy Krueger’s persona as the writer and the director since the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in 1987. It allowed him to wrestle the depiction of Freddy’s character away from being seen as a campy, darkly comedic entity that he became in the latter films. This was the perfect opportunity to wrestle him back to his original intensity, the intimidating and frightening phase as in the 1984 original. Wes Craven’s ultimate goal was to bring Freddy back to his more menacing roots.
Actress Heather Langenkamp also returns to the franchise after her character Nancy Thompson was killed off in Dream Warriors. Cleverly, she is written in to play herself, the actress from the original Nightmare who is now married to a special effects artist named Chase Porter (David Newsome) that coincidentally works for New Line Cinema. Heather also has a six-year-old boy named Dylan (Miko Hughes of Pet Sematary, Spawn), and they live in an earthquake-prone zone in Los Angeles, California. The film begins with the family seemingly working together on the set of what appears to be another A Nightmare on Elm Street film. The updated electronic version of Freddy’s Claw takes on a life of its own and begins to attack the special effects crew one by one.
At the same time, Heather is shaken out of her nightmare when a violent earthquake hits in reality. She becomes more unsettled when she notices that her husband Chase, whose fingers were cut in her dream, was bleeding in real life. In addition to her further sense of unease, Heather is the victim of a stalker who calls her using the Freddy voice. The stalker aspect of the film was inspired by Langenkamp’s real-life frightening stalker experience that added a sinister touch of authenticity to her role in the film. In reality, the actress was also married to a special effects artist named David LeRoy Anderson and had a little boy just around the same age as that of her onscreen character’s son. These elements further aided the unique method of telling New Nightmare’s story by blurring the lines between the fictionalised version of Heather and her actual life. As I mentioned before, damned brilliant!
As the film progresses, Dylan is also being affected by nightmares about Freddy Krueger, and his mental health declines rapidly as Freddy tries to breach into our reality. Heather is contacted by the founder of New Line Cinema, Robert “Bob” Shaye, to star in another A Nightmare on Elm Street film that he refers to as the definitive nightmare. However, Heather immediately declines, explaining to Bob that she has a stalker. Bob informs her that Chase has been working on the prototype for a new glove for Freddy and that Wes Craven has been writing a new script for the past couple months. The story gets psychologically darker after Heather’s husband is murdered by Freddy’s new glove on his way home.The scenes when Heather receives the news of her husband’s death and afterwards at the morgue amplify that sense of dread but rightfully establish a strength in the character’s ability to force herself to move forward because she now has to deal with the fact that something is going on with her son and somehow Freddy is involved. But it doesn’t make sense because Freddy Krueger is not real. Right?
The more time that we spend analysing New Nightmare, the more respect and awe I gain for the way that it was written. Chase’s funeral scene is iconic in itself, as we see some familiar faces in attendance. The audience will notice the director/writer Wes Craven, New Line Cinema producer Sara Risher, Bob Shaye (founder of New Line Cinema and producer of A Nightmare on Elm Street films), Robert Englund (who played the role of Freddy Krueger in all of the franchise films except the remake), John Saxon (who played the role of Don Thompson, Nancy’s father in the original 1984 film and reprised the role in Dream Warriors in 1987), actress Tuesday Knight (played the role of Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), and Jsu Garcia (he was credited as Nick Corri back in the 1984 film and he was in the role of Tina’s boyfriend, Rod Lane).
There’s a point in the film where Heather herself doubts her sanity as she confesses to actor John Saxon that a relative died in an institution, and she worries that maybe she has passed on some sort of mental illness to her son Dylan. Again, this is a scene that resonates with a lot more people than you would think. It’s a genuine element added towards the plot that again assists in blurring those lines between reality and fiction. Actors Heather and Robert Englund soon have a telephone conversation where she tells him that her stalker is at it again and she’s been having Freddy nightmares. But the version of Freddy is not Robert; it is something scarier, darker, and more inherently evil. Nightmare fans would appreciate Freddy Krueger’s upgraded appearance that was updated to look more organic and create a more sinister yet realistic appearance. Of course, this can be attributed to the major advancements made by this time in the special effects industry.
Throughout the film, Heather is being plagued by several earthquakes, which turned out to have a double significance. Yes, she lives in an earthquake-prone zone in California, but it also symbolises Freddy’s attempts to break out into our world. Almost the halfway mark of the film, Wes Craven has a candid conversation with Heather about the origins of Freddy. He described Freddy as being an ancient entity with one sole purpose, and that is the murder of innocence. The power over the entity is to trap it temporarily by writing a story. However, when the story loses its relevance or significance and becomes forgotten, the entity is able to free itself once again. Craven explains that the entity has been trapped for ten years in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Now that the films have ended, the entity has grown accustomed to being Freddy and likes our reality. So now it is trying to breach into our reality, that is, unless he can finish the script by having Heather play Nancy one last time and trap Freddy/the entity once again.
At this point, Heather is still not convinced, even after her conversation with Wes. However, after experiencing yet another earthquake, Freddy shows her just how real he is. The scene that I am referring to is one of the best jump scares that I’ve seen, and combined with Freddy’s more menacing appearance, it plays out to be deliciously startling and chilling. Right after this incident, a streak of Heather’s hair begins to turn gray, which is reminiscent of what happened to Nancy Thompson in the original film. The gray streak is meant as a physical manifestation of the intense psychological stress and trauma that the character is put under in her multiple encounters with Freddy Krueger.
As Freddy/the entity gets more powerful, he is able to physically attack people in our reality. The most traumatising and heartbreaking death would be that of Dylan’s beloved babysitter Julie (Tracy Middendorf) at the hospital. Her death is swift and vicious, mirroring that of Tina Grey from the original film, where she is attacked and dragged by an unseen force in reality. However, poor Dylan witnesses the entire event and runs away from the hospital in an effort to get home across a busy freeway. Freddy, however, is in hot pursuit and begins to torture the little boy, which is even more disturbing.
The final chapter of the film has us back at Heather’s house, where she finally finds Dylan. John Saxon is there also, and once she verbally acknowledges that Fred Krueger killed her husband Chase, a metaphoric switch flips and the Wes Craven’s script in progress seeps into reality. John begins calling Heather by her fictional character’s name in the original nightmare, Nancy. The first time she doesn’t know, but the second time she catches it. And some of the most epic dialogue ensues from this:
Heather: “Why are you calling me Nancy, John?”
John: “Why are you calling me John?”
Heather finds herself magically dressed in her iconic pajamas from the first film, and reality dawns on her that she needs to play Nancy Thompson one last time as she needs to go into Freddy/The Entity’s realm in order to retrieve Dylan, who by now has been kidnapped by Freddy/The Entity. A battle rages between a desperate mother and the demon. Soon Freddy Krueger, aka The Entity, is back where it belongs, trapped for now by Wes Craven’s New Nightmare script and movie.
As a horror fan, the entire experience of the first-time watch, re-watching, and understanding the story’s hidden metaphors was refreshing and fun. And it would be something that I wouldn’t ever be able to experience again until the release of Wes Craven’s other iconic horror slasher Scream (1996), which was released just two years later. Reminiscing on New Nightmare after all this time makes me feel the loss of Wes Craven even more. But at least his talent and genius will always be there in the genius of his films for horror fans all over the world to cherish.
Dark Alice’s Score: 8 out of 10
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Dark Alice has an old soul and a curious mind. I believe that anyone can be a hero and that the good guys should always win! I dislike cruelty to animals and think that they have far superior qualities to humans. My motto is there is no future without the past. I also have a weird penchant for Paranormal TV shows even though the slightest sound makes me jump. I enjoy writing reviews and throwing in fun facts to pique the readers’ curiosity. My ultimate goal in life would be to become a published writer one day. Read More