Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

“The first was the best."

 Phew. The franchise doesn't end with a whimper after all, but with a typically clever and well-directed instalment from the esteemed Mr Craven himself. This last film redeems the whole thing somewhat. Still, it's far from perfect in that it's somewhat slow and there's not enough Freddy screen time.

It’s clever, though; the franchise so far has just been a series of movies and Wes Craven, various actors and even producers appear as themselves. There’s lot of wry commentary on the tiresome idea of horror movies having a bad effect on society (yawn) and a lot of fourth wall-breaking fun- the ending, with Heather reading the script of the very film she’s in to her son, is perfect and, what’s more, believable. The concept is a good one- an Evil From The Dawn Of Time draws strength from monsters in scary stories and this time it’s taken on the form of Freddie from it’s new favourite horrror franchise. It’s a superb idea and very well realised, although the threat never quite feels like Freddy. In fact, much of the film evokes cinematic horror more widely- especially, in the excellent scenes with little Dylan, The Exorcist. And it’s clever to contrast the new “Freddy” make-up with Robert Englund wearing his old costume for the fans.

It’s very well done. It’s very witty. Stylistically, at times it feels very much like the precursor to Scream that it clearly is. But I can’t help feeling that it takes too long for things to start happening, Freddy doesn’t get enough screen time and, well, Freddy isn’t really Freddy, great though the effects are in the final showdown scene. This is an interesting case of a great concept, very well made, which perhaps suffers from not satisfying our expectations of the sort of film it’s supppsed to be.

And that, folks, is the end of Nightmare on Elm Street for a while. I have another franchise to devour before I get to Freddy vs. Jason, and I’ll be watching other stuff in-between. So many other horror franchises, too...