Have we become the audi­ence in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare?

While Scream is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be direc­tor Wes Craven’s meta-mas­ter­piece, his 1994 film New Night­mare pos­es even deep­er ques­tions relat­ing to our col­lec­tive lust for hor­ror. The sev­enth instal­ment in the Night­mare on Elm Street fran­chise sees Craven return to a char­ac­ter he no longer recog­nised. Over the course of the 1980s, end­less cheap sequels, a tele­vi­sion show, cud­dly toys and, most bizarrely, a phone hot­line where Fred­dy Krueger could speak to your chil­dren before bed, had turned this once ter­ri­fy­ing char­ac­ter into a laugh­able par­o­dy of itself.

Craven saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reclaim his cre­ation and New Night­mare is pur­pose­ful­ly designed to be viewed sep­a­rate­ly from the rest of the series. It por­trays Fred­dy as hav­ing out­grown his own mythol­o­gy – he invades the real world to haunt the cast and crew respon­si­ble for the orig­i­nal film. At one point, Heather Lan­genkamp, the actress who played Nan­cy Thomp­son, tells a nurse car­ing for her son – who is being tor­ment­ed by the ​‘fic­tion­al’ char­ac­ter, ​“Every child knows about Fred­dy, he’s like San­ta Claus or King Kong!”

In one of the film’s strangest scenes, Lan­genkamp is inter­viewed on a TV chat show. To her sur­prise, actor Robert Englund is brought out in full Fred­dy attire, wav­ing his men­ac­ing claws to an audi­ence full of ador­ing chil­dren who are all dressed in his famous striped jumper and wav­ing signs declar­ing, ​‘We love you Fred­dy!’ along­side their par­ents. He even high fives one small child wear­ing a Fred­dy mask. The scene is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing when you con­sid­er the char­ac­ter has always been a pae­dophile, some­one who preys on young chil­dren and is burned alive by venge­ful par­ents in the first film.

Accord­ing to BFI’s cult film pro­gram­mer, Michael Blyth, the chat show scene was a sug­ges­tion from Craven of what lay ahead. ​“It’s a warn­ing about parental respon­si­bil­i­ty but also how the media is get­ting dark­er and dark­er,” he tells LWLies, ​“and how that is fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing audi­ences. He’s ask­ing audi­ences to take a step back and look at this mon­ster we’ve all cre­at­ed. Fred­die was nev­er intend­ed by Craven to be a joke or hero, yet here we are.”

The under­ly­ing themes of New Night­mare are noth­ing new, accord­ing to film his­to­ri­an Paul Dun­can. ​“His­tor­i­cal­ly, we’ve always been the audi­ence in the crowd that is cheer­ing Fred­dy on,” he explains. ​“From Guy Fawkes to Franken­stein, soci­ety loves to glam­ourise its biggest mon­sters. Hor­ror movies help us face our fears so that we can then digest them and turn them into some­thing mean­ing­less. By mak­ing it into a joke, we become less scared.”

It’s clear that Craven’s New Night­mare is first and fore­most par­o­dy­ing the increas­ing com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of hor­ror as a genre, but it also works as a social com­men­tary about the new media age. When the film was released, the nascent inter­net was devel­op­ing at an express rate. Through the chat show audi­ence, Craven fore­sees how some­thing like the World Wide Web would whip audi­ences into a fren­zy and almost com­mod­i­fy mur­der in even more dis­turb­ing ways.

Dun­can agrees: ​“Craven was very inter­est­ed in the media and how it takes hold of some­thing and dis­torts it through com­mer­cial­ism. He’s warn­ing us that the media will com­mer­cialise the dark­est actions pos­si­ble and that even a pae­dophile being cheered on by kids will one day not seem too ridicu­lous a con­cept. The media makes mon­ey from infor­ma­tion and then sells it to audi­ences, no mat­ter how dis­turb­ing it is.”

In a chill­ing late scene, hav­ing stopped Fred­dy from ter­ror­is­ing her son and defeat­ing him in a dream world, Lan­genkamp wakes up to find a copy of the film’s events in a screen­play at the foot of the bed. Inside it is a note from Craven, thank­ing her for defeat­ing Fred­dy and impris­on­ing the char­ac­ter to the fic­ti­tious world, once and for all. The scene appears to be a plea to audi­ences to pre­vent hor­ror from being com­mer­cialised to the point of los­ing all mean­ing. You sense even Craven would have smiled sar­cas­ti­cal­ly when Fred­dy was dragged back by Hol­ly­wood to fight Jason Voorhees just eight years lat­er.