How Wes Craven’s New Nightmare Subtly Criticizes the Previous Sequels [Horror Obsessive]
I have a love/hate relationship with the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. On the one hand, the original Nightmare is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, and I think Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is quite possibly the most underappreciated film in the entire genre. But on the other hand, I’m not a huge fan of parts two through six. Sure, Dream Warriors is fun enough, but it’s the only one that’s even remotely good. The rest of the pre-New Nightmare sequels are forgettable at best, so my overall feelings toward the series are very mixed.
But in a somewhat paradoxical way, I love that it’s so hit or miss. See, in a certain sense, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is basically just Wes Craven giving the other sequels (except Dream Warriors) the finger and showing us what a real Freddy film looks like, so without the bad entries in the franchise, we never would’ve gotten this excellent seventh film.
It subtly but powerfully points out where the Nightmare movies go wrong, and it incorporates that criticism into its story in a really clever way. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why this film is so great, so let’s take a deep dive into Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and see what it has to say about the sad state of the Freddy Krueger franchise before Wes Craven came back to right the ship.
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