Freddy Krueger is a horror icon on the same level as Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, King Kong, among others. The character is Wes Craven's invention and it still is an imaginatively created character. Freddy has a burnt face, glove with four sharp razors, a red and green striped sweater, a fedora hat, and an attitude. The original "Nightmare on Elm Street" is among the best and most original horror films ever made - a scarefest that examines the psychological dreams and the subconscious of unruly teenagers living on Elm Street who are being pursued in their dreams by a child killer named Freddy. If he kills you in your dreams, you'll wake up dead. The inevitable sequels were not quite on the same level as the original but they were creative, visual tour de forces with excellent special-effects and a jocose Freddy. Wes Craven was not involved in any of the follow-ups but he came up with a new idea in 1994 - a film-within-the-film treatise on the danger of the "Nightmare" movies and how they affect the cast members. It is a noble idea but it doesn't quite deliver any new themes or ideas.
"Wes Craven's New Nightmare" stars Heather Langenkamp as herself, an actress whose life dramatically changed since she completed the "Nightmare" movies. She has a nice house in L.A., a faithful husband (David Newsom) who works on special-effects, and a seemingly disturbed young son named Dylan (Miko Hughes) who watches scenes from the original "Nightmare" movie and even speaks like Freddy (he also loves to read "Hansel and Gretel"). Not all is well as we discover something ominous is happening in the Langenkamp residence. There are the numerous phone calls from an obsessed fan (maybe Freddy); several earthquake tremors; Dylan screaming at the top of his lungs; her husband killed in a car accident (could be Freddy's fault); and so on. Heather meets with several of her movie co-stars (John Saxon and Robert Englund as themselves) to determine what is happening. My feeling is that she dotes on and is overly protective of her son, Dylan, but that's just a thought. Perhaps Dylan shouldn't be watching any of those movies. What do you think, Heather?
It turns out that Heather is being offered a new role in a new "Nightmare" movie, hence the movie we are watching. Wes's new script had been devised to get rid of the demon who has been unleashed into the world after killing off the fictional character in "Freddy's Dead." As Wes explains in one of the best scenes in the movie, this demon is more powerful and more evil than Freddy and Heather must try to stop him from getting her and her son. It is art imitating life in the broadest sense, and this is possibly the best and most twisted idea in the whole series by far.
Unfortunately, Wes screws it up because he doesn't allow the screenplay to play for some clever thrills and psychological meanings. Instead, he opts for clever inside jokes and unwarranted hysteria. Being a confessed Freddy fan myself, I enjoyed seeing all the puns and jokes, and I liked seeing some of the actors as themselves (look quickly for Tuesday Knight from "Nightmare 4"), the agents, New Line president Robert Shaye, etc. The movie plays like a docudrama and that's when it works best. It's the dramatic, maybe personal stuff, that doesn't work.
The biggest flaw is the crucial casting of the Dylan role: he's played by Miko Hughes who overacts to the hilt and delivers fake screams. This kid is so intolerable and so unlikable that it is difficult to build any kind of sympathy for him or his plight. Heather Langenkamp does a relatively fine job of playing herself (not Nancy) and she is at her best in the opening scenes where the phone continually rings and her son continually screams - her dazed, agitated behavior is superbly realized. For the rest of the movie, though, she seems to be playing the character Nancy and not herself. Of course, she may be dreaming the whole film that we are watching but that's a moot point. I like the scenes where Heather is more relaxed such as when she meets with John Saxon at a park, or when she converses with Wes at his house. Some of the obligatory dream sequences are excellent, including the magnificent (and overlong) inferno ending where Freddy nearly swallows Dylan! I also liked the terrifying sequence where Dylan walks across a highway where dozens of cars and trucks nearly hit him. But most of the movie tries, and fails, to build suspense through countless earthquakes, and numerous telephone rings as in Craven's more successful "Scream." Nothing in the film is particularly thrilling or compelling - it just becomes repetitious and numbing after a while.
I saw this film three times because the critics thought so highly of it, and I thought maybe I missed something. The first time I saw it, I hated it - it seemed nothing like the previous films. The second time, I thought it was just plain awful. The third time I saw it on was actually on TNT (hosted by Joe Bob Briggs) and I appreciated some of the minute subtleties, and the performances that were a lot better than I had anticipated. Director Wes Craven just missed the mark by not investing the psychological, real-life horror of horror movies taking over the lead actors' lives and their families.
"Wes Craven's New Nightmare" is not a terrible movie but it is unfocused and mediocre - just being self-reverential is not enough. Still, if you're a Freddy Krueger fan, you should check it out for the clever puns and the infrequent brilliant nightmare scenes, but not for any other reason.
For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://buffs.moviething.com/buffs/faust/
E-mail me with any comments, suggestions or complaints at Faust667@aol.com or at jerry@movieluver.com
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