New Nightmare 4K 1994

Seven years. Six films. An impressive result for any successful franchise. But every coin has two sides. Freddy died repeatedly and returned again and again for sleeping teenagers. The series exhausted itself somewhere around the fourth installment, but the decent box office returns of the new films guaranteed the creation of countless sequels. In the sixth installment, we were solemnly told that Freddy was dead, and, even more surprisingly, there was no scene in the finale that clearly hinted at an inevitable sequel. However, 1994 was looming on the horizon, and with it, a decade of the film series. Nowadays, the studio would have released an ultimate edition of all the parts, but thirteen years ago, DVDs were not even a thought. So Wes Craven, who started the whole mess, decided to return to his brainchild and put a final, bold, and irreversible end to it.

Craven remembered the basics of the franchise, so all the banter present in the previous parts disappeared into oblivion. Instead of Freddy the clown, we are once again (finally!) offered the terrifying Freddy, who first and foremost frightens rather than amuses. The director decided to play on a slightly different field: here, Freddy Krueger is not the same maniac from Elm Street, but an old evil spirit who has decided to sneak into the real world in the guise of a horror movie icon. In doing so, Craven emphasizes the indisputable fact that Freddy has become an integral part of pop culture that is simply impossible to ignore.

Wes builds the narrative on the example of the first part, where the plot revolved not so much around Freddy as around the people in whose dreams he appeared. Craven brought Heather Langenkamp back to play herself in the lead role, which led to some entertaining consequences. For example, the film reveals that Hollywood is one big happy family, and that Heather's friends are all from New Line Cinema.

The last part of A Nightmare on Elm Street is largely aimed at people who are familiar with the series, as it is full of references to previous films. Moving the action to the real world allowed the director to bring together many people who worked on the franchise, which certainly elicited a positive reaction from all fans. But in the film, the author also decided to ask a question that often comes up in discussions of horror films, but very rarely appears in the films themselves: do the creators think about the effect their creations have on viewers? The development of this issue in the film is only hinted at and mentioned between the lines, but the fact that the director at least occasionally thinks about it is undoubtedly encouraging.

Thirteen years ago, the film did poorly at the box office, which can be explained by the franchise's transition into a slightly different area, which scared away a significant portion of viewers who were used to the caricatured Freddy. On the other hand, New Nightmare finally closed the Freddy Krueger chapter. It's been a long time since the seventh film, but rumors about an eighth installment continue to swirl. But perhaps it's best not to dwell on the past and not to make a new film. Let Freddy remain the scary monster from our childhood. And history has come full circle: the man who started one of the most famous film series had to finish it.