3 out of 5

Directed By: Wes Craven

An excellent premise that’s perfectly executed… only for too long to properly transition to the payoff.  ‘New Nightmare’ could, absolutely, be seen as a type of dry run for some of the metafilm techniques Craven would apply in his ‘Scream’ flicks.  That’s not to say it’s absolutely the same concept, and in some ways, ‘Nightmare’ is more wrapped up in coils of itself than ‘Scream,’ which is more self-aware than meta and shoot me.  But even though, at two hours, this final Freddy entry ends up stretching its premise out too far to be effective as a horror film (or thriller, which it’s closer to), it’s a much more fitting conclusion to events than part 6, especially for its examination / appreciation of an idea that’s essentially fueling itself… which could be read as a statement on Elm Street’s mascot’s endurance despite having been handled by several writers and directors with different takes on the Nightmare theme.  As is stated in the film (or as I’m paraphrasing): Everyone knows Freddy.  So at that point, he no longer belongs to Craven, but to the masses.  And thus, the setup:

Heather Langenkamp plays Heather Langenkamp, star of NoES 1 and 3.  Her husband Chase is a movie special effects guy; her son Dylan is creepy movie kid.  In a glorious double fake-out, the film opens showing a Freddy glove being assembled, and then the tinkerer on said glove chopping off his own hand for the new fixture…  Pull back and we see we’re on a film set, Craven directing, Heather watching her husband operate the glove and gore effects.  That’s a wrap for now, and soon husband is trying to work out the kinks in the glove’s pneumatics… only it comes alive and starts attacking everyone on set!  …Until we pull back to discover that we’re in Heather’s dream, she having been woken up by an LA Earthquake.  Craven’s ‘eye’ through all of this is miraculously smooth, the transition to transition going off without a hitch or wink (until we’re supposed to know we’re being winked at, that is).  And for the next hour, he keeps the tension pretty high, nailing the dreamy atmosphere that made the first flick work and probably hovering just at the line for keeping the creepiness relatable and not yet giving away that we’re in Freddy land… as Heather the actress’ world begins to fall apart, having been pitched a new Nightmare film upon which Wes Craven (yayy playing Wes Craven) is working and meanwhile being plagued by creepy phone calls and slashes in the walls and her kid quoting the first film, which could just be a stalker, or effects of the frequent earthquakes, or Dylan’s recent inability (or lack of desire) to stay asleep.  She meets up with Robert Englund, and her father from the first film, John Saxon, who tell her to calm down, but then aren’t they having strange things happen in their lives as well?  And where is Craven in all of this?

Now I was fully into this film up to this point.  ‘Scream’ is very winky and ‘New Nightmare’ mostly avoids that, as it returns to being, in a sense, a contemplation on the power of dreams, which is the theme that haunted the original ‘Nightmare’.  Langenkamp is brilliant, bringing us right back to the blend of nerves and confidence of Nancy, and creepy kid Miko Hughes was the perfect creepy kid, able to hop back and forth between that Shining shtick and kid-ness without it feeling too scripted or forced.  But I mentioned that this all works for an hour, and, yes, it all works for an hour.  And then… then I got really, really bored.  It’s the scenario where we draw out the punchline for too long and then we realize we’ve drawn too much attention to it… and so it will never be funny.  At 60 minutes through, when we’re still not really doing anything, just stacking up the various odd occurrences in Heather’s life, I glanced at the runtime and realized we had half the film left to go.  The film never really wavers in visual quality, but once its established its formula, Craven fails to build on it, tossing away some aspects – Englund’s role in things, for example – that could’ve been punched up for either more meta-ness or just some good ol’ entertainment.  But he was determined to keep the film grounded, it seemed, and so all that was out in favor of staying tightly focused on Heather and Dylan, and knowing that as soon as he dealt the Freddy card which we knew was coming, the tone of the movie would inevitably shift.  When he does, finally, let the monster out of the bag with about 30 minutes left, it’s way too little too late, and there are hardly any interesting effects to carry us through that concluding phase, just some updated Kruger makeup and a couple prosthetic gags that don’t really impress.

Is that enough to knock the film down two pegs?  Absolutely.  It’s so solid at the beginning and such a fun concept that it completely ruins the flow when the film just decides to not capitalize on it.  It’s still a fitting conclusion, and a nice signal of a ‘shift’ to maturity for Craven, but there’s an ultimate version of this flick that applies the meta context but goes for broke when it comes to the horror piece as well.