Nightmare on Elm Street Marathon: "Wes Craven's New Nightmare"

After a small break for a hurricane, Cinema Won is

back on Elm Street!

 

    So, I guess Freddy was feeling a little better after dying and is back (Kinda) in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare! This time around, Wes Craven is back in the directing chair, with a screenplay he wrote and the series best main character Nancy... I mean, Heather Langenkamp back in the starring role, with a story... to die for! Seriously though, buckle up, it’s about to get meta!
     This time around, the films follows Heather Langenkamp as... Heather Langenkamp! That’s right. We’re in the real world baby and that means actors playing themselves. Heather is having a bad week. A mysterious stalker is threatening her, her son Dylan (Miko Hughes) is acting strange and her husband Chase (David Newsom) has died in an odd car accident. Soon, she begins having nightmares involving Freddy (Robert Englund), as does Robert Englund (Robert Englund) and Wes Craven (Wes Craven). Heather learns she must play the role of Heather one last time in order to stop Freddy once and for all.

This kid's not falling for the
"Free Hugs" con.

      Yes, we are doing a “Fictional-Characters-in-the-Real-World” story, but this one isn’t played for comedy as many other meta-features are. In fact, New Nightmare is the scariest Nightmare movie in the series. The new design of Freddy may look like he’s got a bad rash, but Englund is much scarier here than he’s been in any other of the Nightmare sequels. Every now and again he spits out a funny one-liner, but usually he’s menacing and something that people can believable be afraid of.
     The movie starts out a little slow. This is definitely the slowest burn of any of the other films in the series, but the lengthy time before we see Freddy is well-worth the wait. A surprisingly large amount of tension builds as Heather and her son slowly become more and more unhinged and as the minutes counts down to Freddy’s first appearance, the more scary the movie becomes. Freddy's no longer into silly kills. He's into stabbing you until you're dead.
    So, yes, this is the most entertaining Nightmare movies since Dream Warriors, but it's not without it's flaws. Not all of the acting is that great. Hughes, while only a child, does fall into the more annoying than interesting kids category. And the movie does have a small tendency to drag on a little. And, at this point, the whole series is about to reach to "Been-There-Done-That" phase. It's all getting kinda boring.

Okay, not all the silliness
is gone.

    But, let's put that aside for a second. Wes Craven's New Nightmare is the scariest Nightmare movie is the series and the reuniting of the original cast and director/writer works great. The movies looks great, is fun to watch and will scare the living daylights out of you. The fact that it's a little too slow and that the series as a whole is stating to get stale are minor problems is an overall very good movie. Wes Craven's New Nightmare gets 5 stars out of 6.