NEW NIGHTMARE
It's on Showcase. But then, so was The Tit And The Moon.
After ten years of seeing Freddy Krueger become increasingly popular and increasingly ludicrous, Wes Craven makes his big bid for a comeback hit (for, since A Nightmare On Elm Street, he hadn't exactly set the box office on fire). Hey, why not; Sean Cunningham did it the year before (as producer) with the "last" Friday The 13th movie. Not wanting to make an actual sequel, since there'd been five of those, Craven takes on Krueger with one of those movies-within-movies.
So what Craven tries to do in this one is to simultaneously rethink the Freddy character and yet bring it back to its more pure horror roots, away from the attempts at comedy that characterized the Elm Street sequels. Does he succeed? Well, yeah, sort of; New Nightmare is without a doubt the best Elm Street sequel, if indeed a sequel it is. It's quite lacking, often slipping back into the silliness of Elm Streets past, but we're not talking about something as goofy as Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare here.
Heather Langenkamp is brought back as...Heather Langenkamp! She's got a stalker, a kid prone to fits of freaking out, a house in the middle of an earthquake zone, and an FX-guy husband who isn't telling her that he's working on another Freddy Krueger movie. But, she's getting talk-show spots (despite not having appeared in a movie anybody had seen in ten years, unless you count her role as Nancy Kerrigan), so life can't be all bad. At least, until her bad dreams about Freddy Krueger start affecting not only herself, but her husband and her messed-up kid (Miko Hughes, who only plays messed-up kids) who isn't allowed yet to see what made her, uh, famous. Is Freddy trying to bust over to the "real world" after having finally been killed in that last Elm Street movie? Only Wes Craven (portraying himself as being rather magnanimous on the set; I have no idea how accurate this is) holds the answer, although it's a pretty good bet that the answer is yes.
There are a number of interesting angles and possibilities brought up here. The real fiction (yes, I'm aware of what I just said) of Freddy Krueger is more real to you and I than Heather Langenkamp's life - fictional or otherwise - could ever be, unless one of you guys is married to her (Pig?). It's what we're familiar with; the real lives of people we don't know have no noticeable effect on us. Even if you don't watch the Freddy Krueger movies, chances are, they form a bigger part of your life than the personal problems of an actress whose name most people can't even spell.
Craven also gets in some commentary - not all of it subtle - on Freddy's pussification over the years (never once bringing up that his involvement in part 3 is self-implicating of him). When we first see "Freddy" in this movie, it's in the "real world", just Robert Englund in character doing a talk-show spot. This seems to be a fairly fitting summation of what Freddy had become: cheerful, joking, and aimed entirely at kids (he high-fives a kid with his own Freddy glove in the audience, causing a metallic clang).
There are "Hansel And Gretel" references by the truckload, Craven echoing the fairy-tale overtones of his previous film, The People Under The Stairs. And there's also the running question - never really addressed with any conviction, alas, although the very last scene was a nice touch - of the effect horror movies (and stories) have on the people who make and enjoy them.
But really, none of this is quite as deep as it wants us to believe, nor as deep as it was hailed as being when it first came out. It's just A Nightmare On Elm Street inflicted on the people who were involved in what they thought was just a movie. What it essentially does is the same thing as the original - inflicts Freddy Krueger on people who can't believe in him; the "real world"/fantasy element is not used appreciably differently than the "waking world/dream world" was in the original.
Most of New Nightmare is presented as a fairly straight-ahead reality-bending horror movie, and it works best when it keeps to the horrific, and Heather's relationship with her son (since the husband makes an early exit). The fantastical problems of Freddy are juxtaposed with real-life headaches like the aforementioned stalker, seismic disturbances, and well-meaning but getting-the-wrong-idea doctors. How connected they all are to Freddy is subject to interpretation, I suppose; I like to just see them as a chaotic backdrop.
I can't say I like the element involving Langenkamp's stalker, though. She really did have problems with a stalker way back when, and I have no idea what became of it. To include this in a movie, however, is exactly the kind of shit that these nuts hope for, and there's Craven (aided and abetted by Langenkamp herself) handing it to the wacko on a silver platter.
Great makeup job on Freddy, making his face a little more nasty and angular than we've seen it before. He's also been clad in a trenchcoat this time 'round, for no apparent reason, but I think it works; Krueger is, after all, a child-killing maniac, and trenchcoats speak of a little more menace than red-and-green sweaters.
Yes, Freddy's a villain again, no longer always played as the wisecracking anti-hero, and it's nice to see him shown as a figure of menace for once. Now, I said not ALWAYS played that way - he does, unfortunately, get in some bad lines that harken back to more flaccid films. Some of the sequences veer dangerously close to the kind of things the Elm Street sequels did too, like how that kid sleepwalks across a busy highway, helped out by a giant Freddy glove from the clouds. The visual effects are kind of shoddy too, although I like the set design (both real and virtual) of the Freddy-world climax.
While Craven seems at ease in front of the camera (moreso than most other horror directors I've seen), he saddles himself with some really silly dialogue, particularly when he states that the character of Nancy was given her strength by Langenkamp, who as we know, can't act and never could. (but I do give her credit for puking on-screen, something I can't imagine most actresses ever deigning to do) Hughes does his "messed-up kid" thing, setting a precedent for his role in Mercury Rising. And Robert Englund is here, both as Freddy and himself, which gives him a chance to do his "Look, I'm Freddy!" schtick and his "Look, I'm not Freddy!" schtick, all in one movie. Hey, for some, this is range.
Also showing up from the "real world" as themselves are John Saxon, New Line prez Robert Shaye, producer Marianne Maddallena, and if you don't blink, Nick Corri. Johnny Depp elected not to show, although you can see him in a photo in Craven's office.
This movie has its share of problems yet, such as Craven's dialogue (when the kid's babysitter punches out a nurse, another nurse cries out "Hey, you can't do that!"), a 20-minutes-too-long running length, and a climax that doesn't make any sense at all. But still, I liked New Nightmare overall; it's fairly energetic, almost cheesily sincere, has good music, and hey, you never know how that kid's going to freak out next. Craven's got ideas to spare, although he left most of the thinking to the viewers, having done not quite enough himself.
I've heard that the plot of this movie rips off that of Fulci's Nightmare Concert, which I haven't seen, but what I've read doesn't suggest much similarity other than the director playing himself, and Craven only does that for a couple of scenes here anyway. Anyway, New Nightmare did pretty well, I guess, and has somehow managed to find its way into the arthouse circuit around here (!), even getting frequent showings on Showcase and wide acclaim at film festivals.
It's not all it was hyped up to be, but it ain't half bad.