T w e n t y S i d e d

Meta, or self-aware horror, is typically said to have begun with 1996’s Scream. But as any pedant will gleefully point out Wes Craven’s New Nightmare incorporates the fundamental conventions of meta-horror in 1994. Wait! Kevin Williamson wrote the first concept of Scream in 1994! Yeah. Probably about the same time Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was being made. Except the concept for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was at least eight years old. The basic plot was pitched by Wes Craven originally when he signed on to write the third Nightmare movie; a project that would become 1987’s The Dream Warriors. It became The Dream Warriors because New Line Cinema didn’t like Craven’s story, mainly the entire “meta” idea. But none of that matters anyway, because There’s Nothing Out There was made in 1990 for less than the cost of most houses in the United States.

Several essays and reviews make the distinction that There’s Nothing Out There doesn’t actually count, because meta-horror is “a horror movie that makes typically humorous comments on other movies” while the film in question is undoubtedly and intentionally a comedy. To which I say

But beyond that, we’re *already there* by 1990. We didn’t need a “first movie,” except to prove the point (maybe). I will admit I don’t think the “humorous” part of the above definition is necessary to make something a meta-horror. I would actually rephrase the idea as “a horror movie that shows through context OR explicit lampshading it is aware of genre tropes and audience expectations.” And honestly, the last few Friday and Nightmare movies were only missing the universality of the meta-world. Their self-awareness was either situational, as with Freddy Krueger’s parodies; or tied to specific elements such as Jason’s undead status. The Halloween franchise managed to miss this trend, for better or worse, by trying to dig deeper and take itself even more seriously. Something it seems even Akkad as producer and everyone else involved in the production of Halloween 6 couldn’t do. Or didn’t understand.

Don’t misunderstand, though. I’m not saying Scream and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare don’t deserve credit; they do. As I said above, *someone DID* need to point out that slashers, and horror broadly, had to be done a bit differently to connect with the then-modern audience. This was happening thirty-plus years ago, keep in mind. We’re in a whole new generation of horror movies now, including slashers. Thankfully getting there is a shorter trip than the creation of the slasher to the first new idea. Second caveat: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, unlike Scream two years later, *was not* a hit. It made $20 million off an $8 million production budget. New Line also advertised this film heavily, so it likely barely made a profit, and conceivably could have lost money. It was…IS…the lowest grossing Nightmare movie. Audiences stayed away in droves. Yet, critics liked it for the most part. And of course, it has grown to be very-well thought of. Fan rankings typically classify New Nightmare with Dream Warriors as the second-best movie, but it’s not unusual to see those who give it the #2 spot also consider it every bit as good as the first movie.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare as a title is doing double-duty. Movie-going horror fans would know who Craven was, and likely also know that he had originated the franchise but not been involved in the past few films. The title and the advertising made it clear that a thing audiences had a positive connection with was being included in the next A Nightmare on Elm Street project. At the same time Wes Craven, who is in the film as Wes Craven, the guy who is making a *different* yet *the same* movie as the one YOU ARE WATCHING, is having precognitive nightmares that drive the plot. So…you know…the audience is worried about whatever “new nightmare” Wes Craven is going to have.

I mean, on paper anyway. This plot device has always been the big letdown of the movie for me. See, everyone (not everyone) in the movie is playing themselves, but a fictionalized version of themselves. You’re not actually supposed to keep that in mind; this is all supposed to look like you are watching a movie about real movie people making a real movie. I.e. Heather Langenkamp the actual, real actress is playing Heather Langenkamp the not-real actress based on the real actress Heather Langenkamp, who has been cast to play the character Nancy that she originated in the first Nightmare movie, in a NEW Nightmare movie. The movie Heather Langenkamp, the one who plays Nancy; not the one who is playing…ok, look; I think you get it. I’m cutting out the layers of abstraction unless it’s needed. The fictional Langenkamp has nightmares associated with Freddy Krueger, but she lives in L.A. and wakes up during an earthquake. Her fictional husband is killed by Freddy Krueger while driving and her fictional son starts having nightmares about Freddy Krueger and doesn’t want to sleep. Just like in the first movie! Langenkamp talks to Wes Craven and discovers he has precognitive nightmares. Craven had figured out that creating fictional movies about a fictional version of the nightmare entity that gave him his nightmares which everyone now perceives as Freddy Krueger kept that nightmare entity trapped. But the production of the “final” Nightmare movie Freddy’s Dead freed the nightmare entity to attack those who kept it imprisoned. That is, all the people on Elm Street that made the movies.

The fictional Nightmare movies start combining with the real world depicted in *this* fictional movie and the fictional Heather Langenkamp enters the nightmare entity’s/Freddy’s world which is depicted as an extremely disturbing version of the boiler room used as Freddy Krueger’s lair in previous films. Heather defeats the entity by pushing it into the furnace and emerges back into the fictional real world, where she finds a completed script and a note from Wes Craven thanking her for “defeating Freddy” one more time.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is loaded with references and call-backs to all preceding A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Actors from the franchise appear as themselves. A notable exception was Johnny Depp, who was bigger-than-big by 1994. Wes Craven felt there was no way Depp would agree to appear in a low-budget horror film as a reference to himself and so never asked him. (Depp later said he would have been happy to make the appearance.) But the entire movie is itself a comment on the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Craven had been opposed to creating a franchise off the Freddy Krueger idea and had originally pitched this script to kill the character. Not that it would have; I don’t know why writers keep thinking that writing a character’s death actually means something…but I guess the 80’s was the era where character-death in entertainment stopped being taken seriously. By the 1990’s Wes Craven was ready to revisit the script not so much as a way to kill the franchise but as a correction and as a commentary. By increasingly focusing on humor and making Freddy a celebrity, the franchise, Craven believed, had diminished the real horror of people being killed by their nightmares. By writing New Nightmare to be about the people making the movie he also wanted to reflect how horror movies affected people by their very existence. This element, to me, requires getting past the kludge of Craven making movies to keep a nightmare entity imprisoned. And honestly, it is also something that, despite *other* problems, Scream would do better. That movie explicitly points this out, or at least, points NEXT TO this idea; the antagonists of that film base their actions on what they have seen in slasher movies. In New Nightmare Wes Craven creates a situation in which the horror movie is reality is the horror movie. By associating the film with a then-current and existing reality, Craven is trying very hard to invite the viewer into the possibility that the nightmares (as a broad concept) CAN BE REAL.

Did he succeed? Not with audiences, as already discussed. And arguably Scream didn’t land that connection either. With an important distinction: Scream felt current, relevant, and real. I mean, at the time (thirty years ago, remember?) Wes Craven’s New Nightmare feels exactly like what it was (correction and commentary) but it doesn’t feel like a A Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. Viewers went in to the theater wanting more wise-cracking Freddy and inventive kills. Outside the opening sequence and fx viewers of the era found the film boring and unimaginative. Contemporary approval praised the sleek design and acting. Some even mentioned clever story elements. Personally New Nightmare is the only A Nightmare on Elm Street movie that still scares me. I found all horror movies and even films with minor horror elements, like Ghostbusters, disturbing when I was young. Other than random jump scares, which try to trigger involuntary fight-or-flight reactions (and thereby “scare” you) I can now watch any of the movies from my childhood while eating chunky, saucy, spaghetti and laughing. Including the first A Nightmare on Elm Street, although the ideas presented are discussion-worthy every time. This movie, however; still gets me a bit. Some scenes from various Halloween movies also still hit hard; that might be why I tend to give that series a bit of grace despite many flaws in the sequels. E.g. Ben Tramer getting rammed by the police car in the second movie; that was VISCERAL.

While not really framed the same way it would be in future slasher films Wes Craven’s New Nightmare did establish the idea throughout the film industry, or at least; prefigure the idea, that horror movies going forward had to be made with the understanding that the audience and the characters *in the movie* knew how horror movies worked. Not just popular characters, killers, or mechanics; but horror movies as a concept were now general knowledge. Some ideas would be handled with more intelligence than others. Ready access to phones and computers, for example, has to be addressed now. We spent a decade with movies being made that consistently prompted the audience to wonder what the protagonists had done with their phones. Scripts still struggle with the idea of “motive-less crime.” After all, the killer’s “motive” also being the protagonist’s “motivation” is a great shortcut. And just generally, almost any story creation class you take will tell you people have to have motives. Certainly many villains have been *created* to have no motive, but the goal (by some) every time is to create a franchise and the fastest way to create a sequel where none was planned is to give something a reason. You don’t have to do that; you really don’t. I would think it’s now easier to accept than ever before that some real, allegedly human people are, in fact, just *****.

That’s it for this week, see you soon!

Paige Francis He/him