new nightmare
Like many children of the eighties, the Nightmare on Elm Street movies were a big part of my youth. I maintain that the first film is one of the most original and important movies of the decade, genre be damned. There are pages and pages of text and subtext that can be read into that movie, and while I've swam in those waters before, today I want to talk about what most people consider the final movie of the series, Wes Craven's New Nightmare (we will speak not of Freddy vs. Jason, which I do not need to see to know it's a steaming pile of crap.)
My fandom of the series peaked when the sixth movie, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare came out and some buddies and I got completely stoned and went to the theater on opening night (the climax of the movie was in 3-D and lemme tell you, I laughed so hard I thought my sides would split.) That was either my junior or senior of high school, and shortly thereafter I discovered Argento, an event which changed my cinema life. Freddy--who'd ceased to be scary by the second movie--was relegated to dusty corner of the boiler room. When Wes Craven's New Nightmare came out in 1994, I was at a period in my life where I didn't watch many movies. I recall reading a review or two of it (it was unusually well-reviewed for a film in the horror genre), thinking it sounded interesting, and then forgetting about it.
Throughout the years, I'd occasionally think of the first Elm Street movie, and about four years ago I watched it again. It had lost none of its power, but that did not make me want to revisit any of the sequels, which were entertaining to varying degrees but felt far too hokey for where my tastes ended up. One night, while browsing for material to add to my Netflix queue, I stumbled across the excellent (and really long) Elm Street documentary Never Sleep Again. I stuck it in my queue and eventually forgot about it until it showed up as a "bonus" choice when the movie I'd wanted was temporarily out of stock. I threw it in one random Sunday afternoon and got completely sucked in. When it was done, I knew I had to see Wes Craven's New Nightmare, if only to complete the cycle. Last night I finally watched it.
It was a very good movie, very meta. Heather Langenkamp was outstanding, there were actually a few scary moments (something altogether too rare in horror movies of the nineties) and a lot of treats for fans of the first film. The hook on this one is that Freddy is not a movie character but instead a real entity that can only be locked down by the power of story. Once the Elm St. movies became hokey and safe, people did not fear him anymore, so now he is close to breaking through into our world. Because Heather (as Nancy) was the hero of the first one, she's the only one who can stop him. And once more the lines between reality and dreams become blurred...really, this film predates the reality TV craze but watching it, you can see it as obvious an antecedent. It circles back and back on itself, the Ouroboros. Craven--who would expand on some of these themes in Scream several years later--handles the material well, and while it slips into slasher cliche on occasion, especially towards the end, I found it to be a far more rewarding film than I'd expected.
That said, there is one glaring problem...Freddy Krueger looks like a cheap plastic figurine. They changed his makeup for this movie, and while it was said to be closer to Craven's original vision, it was far less disturbing. The burn marks are too smooth, and everything is too scrubbed, clean. It looks like a man wearing a costume, a fatal problem for a horror movie that is trying for real fear. In the documentary, Craven expresses remorse that they made this change, and acknowledges it didn't work. It's the only bum note in the movie (and less of an issue than you might think, since Freddy has relatively little screen time), but it's one I had a hard time ignoring.
That said, the film posed some interesting questions (and deftly avoided proposing any answers) that I think all of us who work in this genre ask ourselves from time to time. Not, "why do you create this stuff?" but "are you worried about the damage the stuff you create might have on others, especially your kids?" Having two daughters, I've been aware from day one that the art I create and the art I enjoy is frequently not appropriate to share with them. Every once in awhile I think it might be nice to write a story of a less dark nature. But you know what? The stories don't come out that way. And I think working in a genre that, while much more accepted than it once was, still causes many people to raise their eyebrows, has actually made me a much more aware, thoughtful person. Our culture is too often about consuming without thinking about what we consume and why. And while the "why" can't always be answered (which is ok; I think some mystery in life is a beautiful thing) asking the question is sometimes enough.
My fandom of the series peaked when the sixth movie, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare came out and some buddies and I got completely stoned and went to the theater on opening night (the climax of the movie was in 3-D and lemme tell you, I laughed so hard I thought my sides would split.) That was either my junior or senior of high school, and shortly thereafter I discovered Argento, an event which changed my cinema life. Freddy--who'd ceased to be scary by the second movie--was relegated to dusty corner of the boiler room. When Wes Craven's New Nightmare came out in 1994, I was at a period in my life where I didn't watch many movies. I recall reading a review or two of it (it was unusually well-reviewed for a film in the horror genre), thinking it sounded interesting, and then forgetting about it.
Throughout the years, I'd occasionally think of the first Elm Street movie, and about four years ago I watched it again. It had lost none of its power, but that did not make me want to revisit any of the sequels, which were entertaining to varying degrees but felt far too hokey for where my tastes ended up. One night, while browsing for material to add to my Netflix queue, I stumbled across the excellent (and really long) Elm Street documentary Never Sleep Again. I stuck it in my queue and eventually forgot about it until it showed up as a "bonus" choice when the movie I'd wanted was temporarily out of stock. I threw it in one random Sunday afternoon and got completely sucked in. When it was done, I knew I had to see Wes Craven's New Nightmare, if only to complete the cycle. Last night I finally watched it.
It was a very good movie, very meta. Heather Langenkamp was outstanding, there were actually a few scary moments (something altogether too rare in horror movies of the nineties) and a lot of treats for fans of the first film. The hook on this one is that Freddy is not a movie character but instead a real entity that can only be locked down by the power of story. Once the Elm St. movies became hokey and safe, people did not fear him anymore, so now he is close to breaking through into our world. Because Heather (as Nancy) was the hero of the first one, she's the only one who can stop him. And once more the lines between reality and dreams become blurred...really, this film predates the reality TV craze but watching it, you can see it as obvious an antecedent. It circles back and back on itself, the Ouroboros. Craven--who would expand on some of these themes in Scream several years later--handles the material well, and while it slips into slasher cliche on occasion, especially towards the end, I found it to be a far more rewarding film than I'd expected.
That said, there is one glaring problem...Freddy Krueger looks like a cheap plastic figurine. They changed his makeup for this movie, and while it was said to be closer to Craven's original vision, it was far less disturbing. The burn marks are too smooth, and everything is too scrubbed, clean. It looks like a man wearing a costume, a fatal problem for a horror movie that is trying for real fear. In the documentary, Craven expresses remorse that they made this change, and acknowledges it didn't work. It's the only bum note in the movie (and less of an issue than you might think, since Freddy has relatively little screen time), but it's one I had a hard time ignoring.
That said, the film posed some interesting questions (and deftly avoided proposing any answers) that I think all of us who work in this genre ask ourselves from time to time. Not, "why do you create this stuff?" but "are you worried about the damage the stuff you create might have on others, especially your kids?" Having two daughters, I've been aware from day one that the art I create and the art I enjoy is frequently not appropriate to share with them. Every once in awhile I think it might be nice to write a story of a less dark nature. But you know what? The stories don't come out that way. And I think working in a genre that, while much more accepted than it once was, still causes many people to raise their eyebrows, has actually made me a much more aware, thoughtful person. Our culture is too often about consuming without thinking about what we consume and why. And while the "why" can't always be answered (which is ok; I think some mystery in life is a beautiful thing) asking the question is sometimes enough.