Wes Craven's New Nightmare

By the time Wes Craven’s New Nightmare came around, the character of Freddy Kruger had turned from antagonist to protagonist.  Yes, the later Nightmare on Elm Street films still had a formula of a dreamer battling Freddy to keep him from killing and sending him to the grave, but that is not what people went to the theatre to see.  They wanted to see the bad guy.  Freddy had turned into the attraction, the spectacle, and the whole show.  He now had a vocabulary that centred around funny quips, and audience members would cheer for the son of a hundred (or a thousand… I can’t remember this part of the overly done mythology) psychos.

Craven showed a daring ambition to turn him once again into the villain, and returned to the matchup, and relationship, between Freddy and Nancy.  It used the real life actors Heather Langencamp and Robert England to portray themselves in a story where Wes Craven was writing a new script, one that was mirroring reality as was no longer kept at bay from the dark tales of horror.

Craven’s genius came through in the script, and the manifestation of this was in the interaction between Langencamp and England, Nancy and Freddy.  Yes, she had only been the central character in one of the films, but she was the quintessential opposite force to the demented Kruger.  It was through subtleties in the first film that their relationship was established as one of the best horror duos of all time.  It is this relationship, and that of Langencamp and her vulnerable son (whom Kruger looks to mess with) that the weight of the story is held.

It looks in many ways to return Freddy Kruger back into the dark villain, and even pokes fun at his comical reception from audiences within the film.  Craven aims to show that he is not the star, that the evil is what we should root against, and that it is the good that we should identify.  If anything, this movie just proves the fact that any Nightmare on Elmstreet movie without Nancy is impotent at best.  That she is the forgotten force in a film that needs balance, and that through Langencamps acting, the invincible Freddy Kruger has a mortal foil.

The Breakdown of Wes Craven Podcast

For myself, hearing the news that film maker Wes Craven had passed away at the end of August was a big emotional gut punch.  The man had horrified me as a youth, and that was without having even seen one of his films. I remember my sister returning from a slumber party and telling me about a movie she saw called A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Once she told me the premise, my life changed.  Falling asleep was difficult and scary for a good long time, and I would get shivers every time my parents were driving and the car crossed paths with Elm Street.

It was the beauty of the premise that was so powerful.  Being attacked in your dreams, a place where you should be at rest.  Sleep is something that everyone needs, something that cannot be escaped, and to view that activity as death row was so simple yet so innovative.  Craven created a foe who could get you where nobody could save you.  Not the police, not your parents, and not even yourself.

But it was not just the horror that I was cursed with from the movie that made it so vital to me.  When I finally saw the movie, I was amazed at the quality of story telling involved.  The protagonist, Nancy (played by Heather Langenkamp), was a break from the horror scream queens.  She was not just a female who survived until the end, continually running, screaming, and wearing tight clothes.  She was the girl next door, normal and relatable.  She was scared but also brave, searching to learn more about the evil Freddy Kruger, willing to confront him.

It was inevitably the relationship between an ultimate protagonist and ultimate villain that added the appeal of the film.  It was layered and had a message of how the mistakes we make in the past can come back to haunt us.  Yes, it freaked me out when I was young, but it mesmerized me when I was older.  A classic tale that was vivid and psychological at the same time.

In order to give Wes Craven a proper send off, my podcasting partner in crime, Christopher Spicer, and I thought it appropriate to dedicate an entire podcast to the man who had affected both our love of film and story telling.  The podcast to a master of horror can be found here.  And, if you're willing, watch A Nightmare on Elm Street.  You will see one of the best female protagonists of all time rising to the challenge in a sturdy and gripping tale.