Of all the directors that have made their living in the horror genre, Wes Craven - for a time - may have been the most creative. His final installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, New Nightmare, is a film that keeps its audience suspended between dreams, reality, and film, never sure which one you're actually seeing. In the film, producer Bob Shaye plays himself as he brings Craven back to the franchise and courts Heather Langenkamp to star in a brand new Nightmare film - despite the fact that her character Nancy died in 1987s A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and Freddy Krueger himself bit it, seemingly for good, in 1991s aptly titled Freddys Dead: The Final Nightmare. But as the lines between reality and fiction blur, it becomes clear that what Craven is writing is the movie the audience is watching, a meta-mind melt in which Langenkamp stars as both herself and Nancy, the original Nightmare On Elm Street Final Girl. The beauty of New Nightmare is how well Craven handles the self-reflective plot, giving the movie-within-a-movie premise its much-needed scares by minimizing Kruegers funny one-liners used so overindulgently in the previous Nightmare sequels. Craven, of course, would later expand on the meta-horror he dabbled in here to make one of the biggest horror hits of all time a few years later.
Jesse Gumbarge is editor and chief blogger at JarvisCity.com - He loves old-school horror films and starting pointless debates. You can reach out at: JesseGumbarge@JarvisCity.com
