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yendiToday, we're looking at the most ambitious movie of Wes Craven's career, Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Although certainly not the first meta-horror movie, this was a hell of a nifty twist on the Freddy series, and it reclaimed some of the quality that had been lost (abandoned, really) in the last few films.
Concept: Heather Langenkamp is having bad dreams about Freddy Krueger, and discovers that Wes Craven is making a new film. She turns down a part in the movie, but bad things still seem to be happening to her friends and family. We soon discover that the original Nightmare movie actually served as something of a talisman, as works of art can block pure evil by providing evil with an outlet for expression. But the comedy of the recent Nightmare movies has freed this evil to rise again, and it's doing so in the form of Freddy. Will our world soon fall victim to Freddy Krueger? Every town does have an Elm Street, after all.
Kills: 4.
Really Bad Kills: None.
Really Good Kills: Other than the death of Heather Langenkamp's "husband" (who gets sliced open when he falls asleep driving, and crashes, mirroring the death of Dan in part 5), they're all fine. The opening two deaths, featuring the two special effects experts who designed the new glove, are quite stylish. See, when they redesigned the glove for the movie, they created a prop with fully sharpened blades. Why would they do that? For the same reason that the kid in Sleepaway Camp 2 did: because then the glove can be used to kill the creator(s), in a fit of gruesome irony! And that's exactly what happens here, as the animatronic glove shorts out, and ends up "accidentally" slashing one guy in the throat and the other in the chest.
The only other kill in the movie is that of poor Julie, who is with Heather's "son," Dylan, in a doctor's office when Dylan's dream powers give Freddy access to our world, allowing him to slaughter her seemingly from nowhere, in a scene that pays a nice tribute to Tina's death in the first movie. Having the final death (at least, the final one Craven has any part in) reflect the first in the series is a nice bonus.
Freddy's Quips: Not a lot of great material here (this isn't Happy Fun Freddy), but the snarled, "Miss me?" is one of Englund's better moments. And, "Pick a pet for the rugrat, bitch!" is pretty nice, too. But don't look for too many great puns here -- this is Scary Freddy.
Notable Celebrities: Aside from our core cast (Langenkamp, Englund, Craven, Saxson, and others playing themselves), we get small roles for Bodhi "I'm related to famous people and married to a c-list celebrity" Elfman and W. Earl Brown.
Denouement: After a long struggle in the dream world, Heather/Nancy stabs Freddy in his Little Freddy, then she and Dylan shove him into a furnace, where he burns to death, dying that final death. Later, Heather finds the script that Craven had created, which, amazingly enough, turns out to be the screenplay for this very movie.
Miscellany: Director and writer Wes Craven is too famous for me to trivialize, and he also wrote or co-wrote the other two films that I'll discuss later. Many major New Line people (including Robert Shaye, who has had cameos in most of these films) appear as themselves. Other folks who play themselves include Craven, Langencamp, and John Saxon. Johnny Depp doesn't appear, however, which is too bad.
Overall: Technically, the Freddy mythology remains unchanged, as this film takes place in the "real" world. That said, we do get a new mythology, that of the storyteller as protector, using tales of evil to bind the evil entities. This is easily the most ambitious concept that Craven has tackled in any of his films. It's not the first postmodern horror movie (Popcorn, amongst others, predates it), nor is it the last (Craven's own Scream comes to mind), but this is certainly the horror movie that took the idea of why horror movies (and movies in general) as far as any film out there. Not only does Craven present the notion that storytellers are there to protect us, with storytelling itself a form of magic, but he presents himself as both storyteller and guru; Craven is God and the tribal wise man rolled into one (the fact that God and tribal wise men apparently are really lousy actors is something we can save for another discussion).
(An aside: the nature of the filmmaker-as-god concept is why I don't mind the fact that Wes put his name into the movie's title; John Carpenter does not have any such excuse).
So why isn't this film ranked higher? Well, first, all three of the remaining films are damned fine, and my opinion about them shifts on a near-daily basis. Second, and probably more importantly, Craven didn't take his ideas far enough, dammit. Yeah, the concept was intriguing, but in the end, we didn't get a showdown that involved the powers of storytelling or filmmaking, or even the how pop culture and the collective unconscious interact and mutate ideas. No, we get Freddy the Demon getting stabbed in the crotch and then burning to death in a furnace; and while that death is certainly one with meaning (the "fictional" Freddy was thrown in a furnace as well), it's a cop-out in a film that could really go places with some of these ideas.
Still, I can't recommend this film highly enough. Even if the ideas behind it don't get the exploration they deserve, they're still nifty, and the film itself is a blast.
Concept: Heather Langenkamp is having bad dreams about Freddy Krueger, and discovers that Wes Craven is making a new film. She turns down a part in the movie, but bad things still seem to be happening to her friends and family. We soon discover that the original Nightmare movie actually served as something of a talisman, as works of art can block pure evil by providing evil with an outlet for expression. But the comedy of the recent Nightmare movies has freed this evil to rise again, and it's doing so in the form of Freddy. Will our world soon fall victim to Freddy Krueger? Every town does have an Elm Street, after all.
Kills: 4.
Really Bad Kills: None.
Really Good Kills: Other than the death of Heather Langenkamp's "husband" (who gets sliced open when he falls asleep driving, and crashes, mirroring the death of Dan in part 5), they're all fine. The opening two deaths, featuring the two special effects experts who designed the new glove, are quite stylish. See, when they redesigned the glove for the movie, they created a prop with fully sharpened blades. Why would they do that? For the same reason that the kid in Sleepaway Camp 2 did: because then the glove can be used to kill the creator(s), in a fit of gruesome irony! And that's exactly what happens here, as the animatronic glove shorts out, and ends up "accidentally" slashing one guy in the throat and the other in the chest.
The only other kill in the movie is that of poor Julie, who is with Heather's "son," Dylan, in a doctor's office when Dylan's dream powers give Freddy access to our world, allowing him to slaughter her seemingly from nowhere, in a scene that pays a nice tribute to Tina's death in the first movie. Having the final death (at least, the final one Craven has any part in) reflect the first in the series is a nice bonus.
Freddy's Quips: Not a lot of great material here (this isn't Happy Fun Freddy), but the snarled, "Miss me?" is one of Englund's better moments. And, "Pick a pet for the rugrat, bitch!" is pretty nice, too. But don't look for too many great puns here -- this is Scary Freddy.
Notable Celebrities: Aside from our core cast (Langenkamp, Englund, Craven, Saxson, and others playing themselves), we get small roles for Bodhi "I'm related to famous people and married to a c-list celebrity" Elfman and W. Earl Brown.
Denouement: After a long struggle in the dream world, Heather/Nancy stabs Freddy in his Little Freddy, then she and Dylan shove him into a furnace, where he burns to death, dying that final death. Later, Heather finds the script that Craven had created, which, amazingly enough, turns out to be the screenplay for this very movie.
Miscellany: Director and writer Wes Craven is too famous for me to trivialize, and he also wrote or co-wrote the other two films that I'll discuss later. Many major New Line people (including Robert Shaye, who has had cameos in most of these films) appear as themselves. Other folks who play themselves include Craven, Langencamp, and John Saxon. Johnny Depp doesn't appear, however, which is too bad.
Overall: Technically, the Freddy mythology remains unchanged, as this film takes place in the "real" world. That said, we do get a new mythology, that of the storyteller as protector, using tales of evil to bind the evil entities. This is easily the most ambitious concept that Craven has tackled in any of his films. It's not the first postmodern horror movie (Popcorn, amongst others, predates it), nor is it the last (Craven's own Scream comes to mind), but this is certainly the horror movie that took the idea of why horror movies (and movies in general) as far as any film out there. Not only does Craven present the notion that storytellers are there to protect us, with storytelling itself a form of magic, but he presents himself as both storyteller and guru; Craven is God and the tribal wise man rolled into one (the fact that God and tribal wise men apparently are really lousy actors is something we can save for another discussion).
(An aside: the nature of the filmmaker-as-god concept is why I don't mind the fact that Wes put his name into the movie's title; John Carpenter does not have any such excuse).
So why isn't this film ranked higher? Well, first, all three of the remaining films are damned fine, and my opinion about them shifts on a near-daily basis. Second, and probably more importantly, Craven didn't take his ideas far enough, dammit. Yeah, the concept was intriguing, but in the end, we didn't get a showdown that involved the powers of storytelling or filmmaking, or even the how pop culture and the collective unconscious interact and mutate ideas. No, we get Freddy the Demon getting stabbed in the crotch and then burning to death in a furnace; and while that death is certainly one with meaning (the "fictional" Freddy was thrown in a furnace as well), it's a cop-out in a film that could really go places with some of these ideas.
Still, I can't recommend this film highly enough. Even if the ideas behind it don't get the exploration they deserve, they're still nifty, and the film itself is a blast.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 06:28 pm (UTC)Great series, by the way.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:23 pm (UTC)Yes, my savant-ism extends to tag lines!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:54 pm (UTC)And yeah, Popcorn is one of those underappreciated little gems from its era. I think it's what first got me interested in old '50s and '60s horror.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 06:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:52 pm (UTC)Post-1990, however, he's batting 1 for 6 on the big screen.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 08:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 09:28 pm (UTC)Dark Star has recently become one of my favorite movies.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 10:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:22 pm (UTC)Of course the part where Wes Craven and Heather Langenkamp are talking and the camera goes to the computer screen with their dialogue is rather silly.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-29 07:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-31 06:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-05 05:35 pm (UTC)