Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

This time, staying awake won't save you.

As the 10th anniversary of the original Nightmare on Elm Street film approaches, Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy in the first film, starts to receive frightening phone calls from a man who sounds like Freddy Krueger.

Heather begins to have terrifying visions and nightmares, and her young son starts to suffer from disturbing dreams and episodes. Then, her husband is killed in a suspicious accident. Heather starts to fear that Freddy is real and is coming to get her.

But her seemingly paranoid fears become reality when she learns that Wes Craven is writing a new Nightmare film. The script is based on his nightmares, and what happens in the script is happening in real life. Freddy is entering the real world, and Heather will have to play the role of Nancy one more time if she is to stop him.

The concept may not be particularly believable, but neither was the original concept, so lets not let that bother us now. After all, this is fantasy, it's meant to scare you, not to be realistic. The fact is that New Nightmare gave a franchise that had deteriorated into a ridiculous caricature of its original self one last breath of fresh air. Wes Craven returned and took the ostensibly finished series in a whole new direction while also returning it to its dark, scary roots.

Freddy is darker, creepier, and so is the movie. Plenty of unsettling scenes, jumps, and suspense. The acting is very good for a Nightmare film, Miko Hughes was great as Heather's troubled son, Dylan. Langenkamp was great again of course, and I also really liked Tracy Middendorf as Julie; a character that you kind of think is likely to get it, but you really hope she doesn't. Characters who have enough development and who are likeable enough that you actually hope they will pull through... an idea lost on most of the other sequels.

Craven writes himself in a few minutes to explain the concept and weaves in the chance to pontificate momentarily about films being watered down for mass consumption, or banned, which applies this very series in the case of the former, and several of his own films in the case of the later. One has to think what a shame it is that Craven didn't have a hand in a few more of the sequels, but that didn't come to pass. Nonetheless, New Nightmare remains probably the scariest and more different of the Nightmare sequels.

4 projectile black sludge vomits out of 5
Rated R for explicit horror violence and gore, and for language