Written And Directed by Wes Craven
Heather (reading Wes Craven's script): "Heather, thank you for having the strength to play Nancy one last time."
I've finally come to the part in my reviews for this franchise where the lowest grossing movie in it also turned out to be the best sequel of the bunch.
You know when you say a movie is ahead of its time? It's damn well applicable to this one. Everything that audiences would later embrace with the Scream franchise can be traced to this movie. How meta can you get? Watch this one and you'll see just how meta a franchise can get.
Instead of being a legacy sequel to the original movie, which with the returns of Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon you'd almost think what was happening, instead you're given something far stranger. What if Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) was able to come into the real world after all? Granted, Freddy's Revenge road tested that idea with mixed results but here, it's handled somewhat better.
It's been a decade since Heather Langenkamp played the role of Nancy Thompson. In that time, she's had a TV career, married a nice guy named Chase Porter (David Newsom) and has a son named Dylan (Miko Hughes). Her life's pretty great and then she gets the call she wished she hadn't.
Like I said it's been ten years and New Line desperately want a sequel to their biggest horror franchise that the fans will love and will make a profit (oh, the irony). Heather's reluctant to sign up to another sequel but her co-star, Robert on the other hand isn't as shy to reprise his iconic villain one more time.
Of course Freddy (or The Entity) factored into this movie when Wes Craven had to explain to Heather about having precognitive nightmares that an ancient got freed following the franchise ending with the previous movie. Killing Heather would give the entity a hold in the real world and it's determined to do that.
Throughout the movie then, Heather lost both her husband and her babysitter Julie (Tracy Middendorf) - the latter being a break out character, while having both her sanity and her parenting questioned at different points. Not to mention the Entity's fixation on Dylan in order to complete its goal.
The final fight between Heather and "Freddy" might be one of the best we've had in the franchise as the lines between fiction and reality well and truly got blurred. Overall, Heather emerged as the victor as she really did have the strength to play Nancy one last time.
- The movie had cameos from Lin Shaye, Nick Corri, Robert Shaye and Tuesday Knight who all appeared in previous movies as different characters.
- Robert Englund's favourite of the sequels from the franchise.
- Standout music: REM's Losing My Religion.
- Chronology: 1994, California, making this first movie out of Springwood for good measure.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare as a concept should not have worked as well as it did. In fact, it could've sank the franchise into ridicule but in spite of its awful box office numbers, it breathed some new life into it. Without a doubt, it's the best movie in the franchise outside of the first one.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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