Review #51: Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

Cast/Notable Credits:
Wes Craven (Director)

Robert Englund (Freddy/Himself)

Heather Langenkamp(Herself/Nancy Thompson): A Nightmare on Elm St.

John Saxon(Himself): A Nightmare on Elm St

Lin Shaye (Nurse):

Tracy Middendorf (Julie): Mission Impossible 3 (2006), Lost T.V. Series

Miko Hughes (Dylan): Spawn (1997), Apollo 13 (1995)

Trailer:


Plot:

This is what happened: (Wink! Wink!)

Basically Wes Craven sat down after Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and cried himself to sleep while drinking a bottle of Jack. Then he woke up in the morning and took a gun to his head.

Instead of pulling the trigger and ending his misery on how other directors f*cked up his franchise…which most people would have done after watching that piece of crap…he cried a little bit more while rolling up into a little ball in the corner and then vowed to God…and the bottle…that he would not let the Freddy franchise go out that way.

But how can he bring Freddy back to life?

Because Freddy’s Dead…right?

Just like the title of the last movie. He’s dead. You can’t go back on your word. Come on’! Los Angeles declared a special day to Freddy Krueger and his death. You can’t go back on that!

Can you?

Only if money talks. It did. Those little green dollar signs whispered into Wes's head and convinced him to make another Freddy movie. He also had a chance to give Fred some street credit back. Good ole Wessie came up with an idea to bring Freddy back to life, and yet keep him still dead. Huh?

In this film, Wes Craven brings some real life reality crap and mixes it with his money-maker fantasy Freddy lore. Wes plays himself in the movie and has the “itch” to write a screen play for one more Freddy film. Heather L., who played Nancy in the first and third film, also stars in the film and plays herself in the movie.

As Wes writes the “secret” script for the new Freddy film, those script pages turn to reality for Heather. It’s like he’s writing the movie as it takes place in real life. It's like Realilty TV!

Unaware about what is going on, Heather starts having nightmares about Freddy and starts to question her own sanity in the process. Heather's son (Dylan) becomes linked to her nightmares and Freddy. It turns out that Freddy’s trying to seduce Dylan and bring him over to the dark side. The only way for Heather/Nancy to save Dylan is to defeat Freddy one last time.

Dream Sequence Time:
Approx. 35 minutes 6 seconds
(Series total: 3 hr 53 minutes 27 seconds out of 613 minutes)

Freddy Puns:
9 (Running Total: 91)

Villain:

Freddy’s back! Yippee! After “killing” him in Part 6, Freddy returns to the big screen for another adventure in Dream World killing.

Wes goes back to the old school days of when Freddy was actually scary. Craven makes Freddy more evil and scarier looking than any of the previous films. Freddy has a darker side to him, and his pun count takes a plunge as Craven focuses more on him being scary than funny. Bravo!

Cast:

It’s pretty much the same cast as Part 1 (minus Johnny D) as themselves. Heather carries the film once again as the lead female Nancy and herself. To Freddy, she's still Nancy, but to the rest of the world, she is herself. Duality. A complicated idea for a horror movie.

Child actor Miko Hughes co-stars in the film as Heather's son, Dylan, but he didn’t really do much for me in the way of performance. Just as many past child actors have done in these types of films. To me he was just another generic kid who Freddy was chasing down and trying to lure him to the dark side. Once again Freddy tries to do his best Darth Vader impersonation in the film.

SFX/Gore:

Wes's New Nightmare continued the downward spiral of Nightmare films not featuring too many deaths. And how is this franchise still considered to be horror based? A total of four gets sliced and diced some how. 75% of them happen within the first half hour.

New Nightmare uses a motorized Freddy Glove in the beginning of the film to slice and dice a few dudes. That was pretty cool looking, and did its job well.

The dream sequences were a little less hokey than most of the films, but nothing really cool that caught my attention. The final dream sequence was well done, but it didn’t really seem to fit the franchise. I didn’t really have a favorite death in the film, but there was one that I was mad about...actually for killing the only real hot chick.

TNA:

Boo! Hiss! The franchise continues to disappoint in the TNA category for the third straight movie. Watch Part 3 & 4 for the franchises only looks on the female anatomy.

There were only two hot chicks (Shark Factor) in the film. Heather L. (Pictured Above) being the main one. Tracy Middendorf is the other one. Middendorf plays Julie, Dylan's babysitter. For some reason I've had a soft spot in my heart for her. I've always referred to her as the hot blonde babysitter chick who Freddy kills for no good reason. Oops. Spoiler.

T.Gun's Take:

Well I give them credit for conjuring up some scheme to bring the finger-slashing burnt man back onto the screen. Considering the last film was complete crap, this one was at least bearable to watch.

New Nightmare did seem to lack that "It" quality though. It was well done and put together from a technical standpoint, but I have never seemed to fully embrace it as a ANOES movie. It just never did it for me. Even the crappier lesser versions of this franchise had managed to capture that aspect.

I did like the “Terminator” Freddy Glove at the beginning of the film. That was pretty cool. It was a fresh idea that I thought they could have played with a little more. Oh well. It gave us half the kills.

I’m still not thrilled about the series lack of dedication to the female frontal parts or the whole "TNA & horror movies go-hand-in-hand complex". This film added coal to my fire rage. On top of it, they kill off the only real hot one, the babysitter. Have I mentioned that I didn’t like them killing off the babysitter? Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

The corniest and dumbest idea involved Rex the Dino. What’s up with that?! Dylan's stuffed dino doll, Rex, was the “guardian warrior” between Freddy and Dylan. Dylan couldn't be hurt as long as Rex was at the end of the bed. Are you f*ckin' kidding me? Please.

W.C.'s New Nightmare gave us plenty of underlining safety messages for drivers in the film. For example:

1.Don’t talk on the phone, and drink coffee at the same time.

And

2. Buckle up! Click it or ticket!

Man...Heather Langenkamp’s an unsafe driver (or at least in the film she was).

Gotta say it was a clever but cheesy way to get Freddy back on the screen. AND soak up a few more millions in cash. It definitely wipes out the bad taste of Freddy’s Dead.

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on October 14, 1994 and made $18 million at the box office ($6.7 million opening weekend)
-Wes Craven’s daughter, Jessica, played a nurse in the film, just like his wife did in the first film
-The clothes worn by Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon are the exact clothes from the first film