Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

[baumer]

Discuss

[A Marvel Fanboy]

Interesting idea but falls overlong.

[The Stingray]

The second best Nightmare, after Dream Warriors. The satirical, self-referential stuff Craven did on Scream really started here, only to much less financial success.

[baumer]

I love horror movies. I love being scared and I love the fact that a movie (something make believe that I, as an intelligent person,knows is just images projected from a screen ) can manipulate my emotions and make me nervous. This is one of those movies. And in the 90's, there have only been two movies that have actually made me nervous in some scenes. And those two movies are by Craven himself---Scream and this one.

When this film first came out, it was ten years and six films after the original. I have seen all the Freddy movies more out of morbid curiosity than out of interest. And maybe a part of me was hoping to catch a glimpse of what made the first so damn scary. And time and time again I was disappointed. But when I read in Fangoria magazine that this new one was going to be directed by Craven, I got very excited. Could it possibly be that this film would go back to it's roots?

Yes, it did.

There is no two ways about it, Craven cares about Freddy. He cares about how he was supposed to be, not what he has turned into in the last decade. Freddy was not even remotely funny in the first one. He was a brutal, maniacal, sadistic, bent on revenge murderer. He wanted to slice Nancy in two and he did that to Tina ( actually sliceher into many pieces ). But in the mindless sequels to come, he became Eddie Murphy. And there was nothing frightening about the sequels. They made money but they weren't true horror films. But this one, well this one goes back to it's roots and is almost as scary as the first one.

This story is about the film character of Freddy becoming real somehow. He has been a part of Lagenkamp, Saxon, Craven and Englund's life for so long that he has somehow become real. And now what was once a simple film character actually haunts the cast of the original. We even get to see Rod ( Tina's boyfriend from the original ) at one of the funerals. And what makes the story scary is that now Freddy has decided to come after Heather's kid.

This film goes back to all the techniques that made the first a classic. There is excellent direction to make us fear what is under the bed. The lighting is classic horror film lighting and the music is perfect. There is however one complaint that I have and that is when Freddy is chasing the kid across the road. He has become larger than life. He is like the Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters. And that it seems is much more like the other Nightmares, not Craven's version. And that takes away the delight in watching what was otherwise a perfect horror film.

I said in one of my reviews of a horror film that there are no films in the 90's that are truly scary. However this one is as close to an 80's horror flick as you will get now a days. It is very frightening and it is almost a prequel to Scream. This is one film that should not be missed. It is a tribute to what scary films are supposed to be. If I want to laugh I'll see Chris Rock, but if I want to be scared, Craven is the man!

 

9/10

[ddddeeee]

This is one of the best horror films of the 90's. Incredibly fresh and original, with a killer soundtrack and a genuinely interesting concept. How often does this happen in the 7th film in a franchise?

 

The first Nightmare will always be my favorite and it's probably more effective, but this is probably the best made film in the series.

[75Live]

I have this as the second best Nightmare only behind the original and just above part 3.

 

Yes as said above this is definitely the movie that let Wes Craven know that Scream could work.

 

I liked how they used all the mythology of the whole and blended into some mythology of real life.

 

Happy and sad about this movie.  It got the series back to where it should be just in time for the original series to end.  But happy that it was a good ending to that part of the franchise.  To use an analogy that baumer will like,  this is basically like the Rocky series, they had to make Rocky Balboa so the series couldn't end with Rocky 5

 

A-