Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) is the seventh entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street series of slasher films. It was preceded by Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, and followed by Freddy vs. Jason. The film was the first in the series since the original to be written and directed by Wes Craven. It stars Heather Langenkamp, playing both herself as well as reprising her role as Nancy Thompson.
Written under the working title of A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: The Ascension, Craven set out to make a deliberately more cerebral film than recent entries to the franchise - which he regarded as cartoonish and not faithful to his original themes. Craven also mentions in the DVD commentary that the basic premise of this film originated when he first signed on to co-write A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, but New Line Cinema rejected it then.
Just as the first Nightmare film opened with the creation of Freddy's infamous glove, New Nightmare opens with the creation of an updated, more sinister and sleeker looking glove. As the maker of the claws appears to chop off his own hand in preparation for attaching the claws to his own wrist, the other people on the set wince, and the director, Wes Craven, encourages the effects specialists to pump more blood. Soon he yells, "Cut! Print that, Gretchen!". Heather Langenkamp with her husband, Chase, and their son, Dylan, are wandering around the set of the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
Presently the claw, which was only a prop a minute ago, comes to life and starts maiming and killing the special effects crew, Dylan disappears into thin air, and, as the claw advances to attack Chase, Heather screams, waking up in her own bed in her own house with Chase, in the middle of an earthquake in Los Angeles. After the earthquake dies down Chase has a couple of scratches, the same as he had received in the dream. This causes Heather to wonder if they were sustained in the earthquake or in the dream.
Heather reveals she has been receiving harassing phone calls from "some deranged fan" acting like Freddy, but they've stopped for the last couple weeks. When she gets home, her son has an episode during which he warns her in a voice not his own, "Never sleep again!" Worried, Heather asks Chase to come home. Chase falls asleep at the wheel on the way, and dies in a supposed car crash. When Heather goes to identify the body, it seems, to her, that there may have been more to the crash than meets the eye, mainly the claw marks on Chase's chest. Dylan, now also grief stricken, continues acting ever more strangely. When Heather takes him to a hospital, the doctors suspect her of being insane and of abusing him.
She goes to Wes Craven for help making sense of what's happening. Craven tells her he doesn't know much more than she does - he dreams a scene or two each night and wakes up and writes them down. He goes on to tell her that in the script he's been writing, pure evil can be temporarily defeated if its essence is effectively captured in a work of art that is able to allow evil to express itself. Craven explains that the evil has taken the form of Freddy because it is a familiar one. "Freddy" sees her as the gatekeeper who holds Freddy at bay since Nancy defeated Freddy in the first movie. To Freddy, it is Heather that gave the character of Nancy her strength. Freddy is attacking her at her weakest points, trying to break her down before confronting her. She leaves as confused as when she arrived. Freddy forces her to accept the role he wants her to play. At the same time, he eviscerates the toy dinosaur Dylan believes has been protecting him and abducts the boy. The final countdown between Freddy and the mother-son duo occurs in a steamy and water logged dreamscape ruin, apparently Freddy's home turf. Even so, the two succeed in killing Freddy and escaping back to the real world. There they find the script of the film Craven has been working on waiting for them. Dylan asks his mother to read some of it to him, which she does: "We open on an old wooden bench. There's fire and tools, and a man's grimy hands building what's soon revealed as a gleaming set of claws. And the claws are moving now as if awakening from a long and unwanted sleep..."
The film was well-received critically, particularly for a slasher film, but failed to make as big an impression at the box office as any of the previous six films - the United States take was $18 million dollars. Several critics have subsequently said that New Nightmare could be regarded as a prelude to the Scream trilogy - both sets of films deal with the idea of bringing horror movies to "real life". Whilst the Scream films appealed to huge audiences, New Nightmare is talked of as a clever project, personal to Craven.
The film opened in 1,850 theaters making $6.6 million it's opening weekend.
Domestically, the film has grossed $18 million, making it the lowest grossing Nightmare movie. |
