Wes Craven's A New Nightmare - Review

Wes Craven's A New Nightmare is the 7th installment in the Elm Street series. An attractive girl on Facebook recommended it to me, which actually led to me getting back into the series as a whole. The film gets meta which makes for an interesting and original spin on the traditional slasher.

The film takes place in the 'real' world. It features many actors from previous films playing themselfs. Basically the film series ended with Elm Street 6. For 6 films some type of evil force had been contained in the character Freddy Kruger. Now the series is over the evil force is able to leave that role and start attempting to get unleashed in reality. The evil is using the actor's (who played Nancy in 1, and 3) child to come into the real world.

The film is a much darker offering than what went before. The traditional jokey Freddy Kruger appears briefly, but is Robert Englund performing for some fans. The real version of Freddy Kruger is much more menacing, and scary. He appears wearing a dark trenchcoat and fedora, he doesn't make jokes, or act goofy, he just acts with pure evil intent. His clawed glove is now much more organic looking, made out of bone and muscle, like an extension of him rather than an actual weapon. It's far into the film before Freddy is seen in full, it's a shame as I would have really liked to see more of him as it's such an interesting departure.

It's been a fair few weeks since I saw this, so my mind is a bit fuzzy on it, so not too interesting a review. Needless to say, while not a classic, it is definatly worth watching if you have any sort of interest in the horror series.