(Reviewed by Eminem4569) - “Hey Dillon, ever play skin the cat?” - Freddy Krueger

Wes Craven’s films with the exception of his debut shocker Last House on the Left have always relied more on chills and thrills rather than on graphic displays of butchery. A Nightmare on Elm Street, certainly one of his best, created an unique nightmare world. While in the nightmare dimension a very distinctive and grim man with a filthy red and green sweater, a fangoria hat and a glove with finger claws would instill fear into teenagers.

Nightmare on Elm was Wes Craven’s big breakthrough as a director. He now returns to the series as a director for the first time. Set 10 years later in the real world, Wes Craven's New Nightmare focuses on the lives of some of the people involved in the 1984 original (Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Robert Shaye and John Saxon, all of whom play themselves). For any fan boy it will be amusing watching actors and executives associated with the films play themselves, or at least versions of themselves.

In this movie we see Heather (Nancy from the first film) as a happily married actress, to a movie special effects man, Chase Porter (resembling actress‘ Heather‘s real life). However, Langenkamp is having dreams about Freddy and we soon find out her son, Dillon, is as well. The actor who played Freddy, Robert Englund seems freaked about something and is painting some very bizarre pictures. Strange things continue to happen as Heather finds out Wes is writing the finale to the series and she is the star…

The fact that Craven's original nightmare movie was famously inspired by a series of news articles about people who told relatives of their fears of killer nightmares and then died the next night, it would seem as if Craven was playing with fire here, but that is part of the excitement and danger of this film.

Freddy Krueger has been given a modern, darker, meaner upgrade and a fresh set of claws, though there is no doubt he is same monster who first raised terror in the 1980‘s. I especially like the blue lighting darkness Craven used, gave the film a suspenseful and atmospheric theme.

The thing that makes New Nightmare better than any other Nightmare on Elm Street besides the original is that it is original. The Nightmare movies just kept repeating themselves, with Freddy coming back and going after the people who stopped him before. This time around, we see Freddy trying to break into the real world, outside the movies. New Nightmare is very innovative and pre-Scream, which would later use the same formula.

Much of the film’s time is spent on Heather and her reactions to the nightmares and the strange occurrences that at times this almost feels like a character study. I actually cared when bad things happened to her and it became that much more disturbing. My attention was locked while watching this film and there are not many other horror films I could say that about. The climax of the film is one of those special effects plunges into a scary dimension, one of the Nightmare on Elm Street series’ trademarks.

Here, Wes Craven definitely favors quality of scares over quantity of blood. New Nightmare is definitely one of the highlights of his filmography and it was nice to see Craven finish the franchise he started.

**** 4 stars