20 "WTF Did I Just Watch" Horror Sequels

6. Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Before he changed horror forever with the Scream movies, director Wes Craven returned to A Nightmare on Elm Street one last time for an equally impressive foray into meta-horror.

In Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Heather Langenkamp and various personnel associated with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (playing themselves) are being stalked by 'Freddy Krueger', who is real after all. As franchise creator Wes Craven explains, it's an ancient force of evil that's taken Freddy's form. 

Craven believes that, by crafting a good-enough story based on it, the entity was held prisoner while the Nightmare on Elm Street movies came out, but now that the franchise has ended, it's been set free. He states that they need to make one more sequel in order to recapture the entity, and is writing a script throughout the movie. When Langenkamp finds it after defeating Freddy, it's somehow the exact script of the movie we've just been watching. Trippy, eh? 

By combining the usual dream imagery with such inventive meta storytelling, Wes Craven's final Nightmare on Elm Street flick was easily the weirdest of the lot, and that's saying something. It is also a smashing meta-horror that is, quite arguably, the best film in the series, but at the same time, it's understandable why audiences were confused by it. Meta cinema is all the rage now, so you could say this was ahead of its time.