New Nightmare Review (1994) Worth Watching?

It's about Freddy coming back, but in real life! Yep. He literally goes after the actors from the movies.

New Nightmare was directed by Wes Craven (who also directed Scream 4 and My Soul To Take) and stars Heather Langenkamp (from Portal and Scream, Queen! My Nightmare On Elm Street), Robert Englund (from Abruptio and To Hell And Back: The Kane Hodder Story) and Miko Hughes (from FredHeads: The Documentary and Pet Sematary).

This time the terror doesn't stop at the screen.

How to revive a horror franchise after the last installment was literally called Freddy's Dead? Easy, make a movie about how the movies could only be movies if they were in the movies.

You see, New Nightmare tells a story that explains how Freddy was just a demon who was free to roam the world and terrorize at will, that is unless he gets trapped in a story. So the demon terrorizes Wes Craven, who happened to write movies and effectively trapped Freddy for over 10 years in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. The movies end and the demon/Freddy roams back to terrorize the popular stars of the franchise.

That makes sense, right?

But I do like meta horror and New Nightmare fits meta to a T. Wes Craven likes meta too, two years after this meta horror he went on to make the crown jewel of meta horrors: Scream.

New Nightmare features Heather Langencamp, Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, as the wife of a Hollywood special effects designer. She has a real life nightmare problem and keeps getting harassing phone calls from someone pretending to be Freddy. Then Bob Shaye of New Line Cinema (producer of all Nightmare movies) calls her in and pitches her the leading role in Wes Craven's new horror flick. She declines, goes home, learns that her son is being hunted by Freddy in his dreams and later learns that Freddy killed her hubby. But, Freddy's just a character in an old horror movie, right?

So maybe the concept of this movie sounds weak, but it wraps up pretty cool. Freddy has a whole new look which is fitting considering he's not the Freddy we know played by Robert Englund, rather he's the demon that just took a liking to Wes' Freddy character. And the demon happened to like the story he was trapped in for 10 years, so he was eager to recreate it in real life. One particularly awesome recreated scene was from the first Nightmare on Elm Street when Tina was killed by Freddy and dragged over the ceiling leaving blood trails in her wake. In New Nightmare we get to see the real Freddy dragging her around while walking on the walls and ceiling. Super cool to say the least.

Worth Watching?

New Nightmare brings back all the greatest hits. Reminiscent scenes, favorite actors and that creepy iconic score. It's fun for franchise fans, maybe not so much for casual movie-goers looking for a standalone horror to watch.

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