Under The Sheets
I’ve seen all of the films in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (including the television series). Growing up, it was one of the few horror franchises that I really enjoyed watching. Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) became funnier with each film and, sadly, he became less of a killer and more of a comedian. The first film truly scared me (I was only eight or nine when it was released). Wes Craven’s New Nightmare attempted to bring Freddy back to his evil roots, and succeeds at doing so.
Spoilers Ahead!
In the film, Heather Langenkamp (who portrayed Nancy in the franchise), is married to a Special FX worker named Chase (David Newsom). She has a dream that Chase and other workers on the set of a new Nightmare film are murdered by the new Freddy Krueger glove that they created. Heather is asked to reprise her role as Nancy in a new Freddy film but is reluctant to accept it due to her recent nightmare and the fact that she now has a son, Dylan (Miko Hughes).
As the movie rolls along, Chase is killed in a “car accident,” Dylan begins to have episodes of screaming and sleepwalking, and Heather starts to become unhinged as the real Freddy attempts to cross over into the real world and taunts her through phone calls, cryptic letters, and earthquakes.
Wes Craven (creator of the franchise and horror legend) is also having dreams, and writing his newest Nightmare film, each page acting as a prophetic message of what next happens to Heather, Dylan, and others. Robert Englund begins painting gory Freddy-inspired portraits.
A local doctor believes that Heather is abusing Dylan, doing “recreational drugs,” and losing her mind. Things come to a head whenever Dylan escapes from the hospital, runs into traffic, and gets strung along by Freddy. Heather chases him home and runs into John Saxon (who portrayed her father in the original film). Something’s different about him, though, and Heather slowly realizes Saxon actually IS Lt. Thompson from the film.
She then faces off against Freddy in his world. Eventually Freddy corners young Dylan and attempts to capture him, but Heather manages to save Dylan and tosses Freddy into a furnace. He reveals his true demonic form and burns to death while his world crumbles and then explodes.
The film manages to generate some decent scares (the best since the second film), and Freddy has stripped back most of the humor. It’s a solid creepy film with a few gross and gory moments. There are also nods to the original film (watch babysitter Julie’s death in particular). Cast and crew from the original film portray their “real world” selves including Wes Craven, Sara Risher, Robert Shaye, and Sam Rubin, among others.
It was nice to see Freddy be genuinely scary again. He received a redesign for the film that was based on Craven’s original idea for the character. His face has more muscle tissue exposed and the glove looks more like a burned hand with a bladed apparatus attached to it. Basically, this ain’t you daddy’s Freddy.
I enjoyed this film. It was dark and gloomy and had just enough scares to bring Freddy back to his old evil self. Langenkamp did a great job as herself and all of the supporting cast did an excellent job as well.
As always, thanks for reading. I have a busy week ahead, but I plan on watching and blogging about a new film each night!
Ken's Alternate Universe! 