Two years before doing the same with his hugely successful movie Scream, Wes Craven applied a post-modernistic approach to New Nightmare, the seventh film to feature Freddy Krueger, the dead child murderer who enters his victim's dreams in order to kill them.
Keen to distance his film from the last few sequels, in which Freddy had slowly morphed from frightening bogeyman into a trashy comedy/horror pop icon, Craven cleverly takes his creation out of the movies and into 'real-life'. New Nightmare sees actress Heather Langenkamp (Nancy from Pts 1 & 3) playing herself, and becoming convinced that the monster from her films is somehow escaping his fictional realm to kill in the real world.
This imaginative and, at times, admittedly rather silly concept is a refreshing change from the formula of the preceding few Nightmare movies, which had grown stale and distinctly unscary, and allows the makers of New Nightmare to start afresh, since they are not bound by anything that went before.
It also provides a great excuse to gather together the cast and crew of the earlier films and show them having fun playing themselves: Robert Shaye (New Line producer), John Saxon (who plays Nancy's father in Pts 1 & 3), Robert Englund (Freddy, of course) and even Wes Craven (who takes an amusing swipe at those responsible for trashing his original creation) all appear, with even the 'non-actors' giving surprisingly good performances.
As the story progresses, it transpires that the creature that has been causing poor Heather so much trouble is in fact a demon that has been trapped within the Freddy persona. But with the gradual watering down of the character and Freddy's eventual death in Part 6 (Freddy's Dead), the evil being is now free to break out of his cinematic prison and cause some real damage.
The only trouble with such an interesting concept is that it soon becomes too complicated for its own good, with lapses in logic, some boring moments required to explain what the hell is happening, and an inevitably confusing finale.
Ultimately, this is a nice, but not altogether successful attempt by Craven at salvaging a character that had well and truly been stomped into the dirt by other film-makers.
6.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 7 for IMDb).
Keen to distance his film from the last few sequels, in which Freddy had slowly morphed from frightening bogeyman into a trashy comedy/horror pop icon, Craven cleverly takes his creation out of the movies and into 'real-life'. New Nightmare sees actress Heather Langenkamp (Nancy from Pts 1 & 3) playing herself, and becoming convinced that the monster from her films is somehow escaping his fictional realm to kill in the real world.
This imaginative and, at times, admittedly rather silly concept is a refreshing change from the formula of the preceding few Nightmare movies, which had grown stale and distinctly unscary, and allows the makers of New Nightmare to start afresh, since they are not bound by anything that went before.
It also provides a great excuse to gather together the cast and crew of the earlier films and show them having fun playing themselves: Robert Shaye (New Line producer), John Saxon (who plays Nancy's father in Pts 1 & 3), Robert Englund (Freddy, of course) and even Wes Craven (who takes an amusing swipe at those responsible for trashing his original creation) all appear, with even the 'non-actors' giving surprisingly good performances.
As the story progresses, it transpires that the creature that has been causing poor Heather so much trouble is in fact a demon that has been trapped within the Freddy persona. But with the gradual watering down of the character and Freddy's eventual death in Part 6 (Freddy's Dead), the evil being is now free to break out of his cinematic prison and cause some real damage.
The only trouble with such an interesting concept is that it soon becomes too complicated for its own good, with lapses in logic, some boring moments required to explain what the hell is happening, and an inevitably confusing finale.
Ultimately, this is a nice, but not altogether successful attempt by Craven at salvaging a character that had well and truly been stomped into the dirt by other film-makers.
6.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 7 for IMDb).