New Nightmare
was mostly decent except for the end. This was my first
viewing since sixth grade. God tier then. Definitely a step below
now. Wes Craven is still solid(ish) and the film holds up alright. You can see the wheels turning here for the meta epic that he comes out with a few years later in Scream. This is sort of a prototype for what becomes postmodern horror. On it's own I would say this is one of
the better Nightmare movies.
I shall rank those here pretty soon.
Pros: Solidly
postmodern. Felt totally revolutionary when it came out. Really
fucking slick. Return to scary Freddy.
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| Yes, this shit again |
Cons: Bob Shaye,
again, is unfortunately all over this one too. Notably the redo of
Freddy's disgusting tongue coming out of the phone receiver and
licking at Langenkamp's face. Really drags in the middle and the
ending isn't the best.
Notes: Opening
scene is fucking brutal. It consists of a Langenkamp, Nancy from the
first one, on a Nightmare set
with her family, acting and what not, when the robot Freddy
hand comes to life and starts slaughtering people. Husband
is a FX guy. Son is the “boys have penises and girls have
Kindergarten Cop. Wes
Craven is there, too. IRL it was all a dream. Had an earthquake. Kid
is watching NOES and
freaks out. She gets a “One, two, Freddy's coming for you,” prank
call. Goes on a show. Getting pub for the 10th
anniversary of 1. Uncle Freddy comes out. Hams it up. She goes and
sees Bob Shaye. He's proposing a definitive Nightmare
movie. Says that him and Wes haven't talked for 10 years because Wes
hasn't had any “really scary nightmares.” Pretty sure that wasn't
why. Also says that while they were going to leave Freddy dead, “the
fans” won't let them. Pretty sure that wasn't true either at that
point.
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| The adored child murderer, hamming it up |
We start learning stuff
about Langenkamp's son who is losing it. He has this stuffed T-rex he
names “Rex.” Rex is the kid's protector. Pretty cool idea and
keeps showing up with Freddy wounds. They stitch him up and he is
ready to go again. Rex is constantly waking the kid up fighting
Freddy, he tells his moms. He has another freakout while the dad is
away working on a movie. Langenkamp calls him up on his ginormous
cellular telephone and he decides to drive four hours to get back
home. Langenkamp dreams his death. It goes thus: he is all over the
road dozing off. Falls asleep driving. He tries to call home on his
massive, barely functional cellular phone. Nothing. Dozing again. We
see the knives from the glove come out of the seat and sort of flick
his crotch. He is totally out. The glove comes out and slashes his
chest and wrecks his car. Wakes from her dream. Police show up to
tell her he's dead. She demands to see the body. At the coroner's she
sees the Freddy slashes and pukes.
At the funeral the wind
blows like crazy, earthquake. She falls and hits her head on the
coffin. It's crazy. The kid disappears. Is getting pulled into the
coffin by Freddy. She saves him. Her husband reanimates and attacks
him. She wakes. John Saxon saves her. He is the best. In the
background in the crowd we see Wes shaking hands with Shaye. Robert
Englund is awkward. Seeing the swarthy dude from the original NOES
in the background as well.
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| The infamous painting |
Kid keeps watching the
original NOES, a glutton for punishment, which is apparently
always on cable. He is singing the Freddy song. Heard it from under
the bed, he says. He tells her Freddy is trying to get into their
world, well no shit. He has a nose bleed and she takes him away to
clean it. We see the TV is unplugged. She takes him to the playground
the next morning and meets Saxon. While they talk the boy climbs on
top of this death trap of a spaceship jungle gym. That you can climb
out of the top of this is crazy. She goes home. Is getting mail from
a “stalker” which includes one letter of the alphabet on a single
Bible page. Calls Robert. See Robert's shitty paintings. He is
working on a Freddy one. He is having dreams, too. It's such a shit
painting.
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| A candid of Langenkamp with her favorite prop |
All the dreams and
stuff keep escalating. The kid gets more and more Freddy obsessed.
Comes at his momma in her dream with little steak knives attached to
his fingers. She wakes and comes down stairs. The kid has arranged
the pages to spell “answer the phone.” I start wondering here if
this movie is actually bad and I just have nostalgia for it. Anyway,
the phone, it rings. She does indeed answer it. It's Freddy. His
tongue comes through the phone and licks her face, again. God damn
it. What the fuck. Bob Shaye loves that shit, obviously. It's still
fucking gross and not scary. It makes the kid puke, which yeah. He
fucking loses it. Kid goes to the hospital. Nurse is Bob Shaye's
sister, Lin Shaye. You might remember her as the gross landlord from
Kingpin.
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| Such an elegant gesture |
Langenkamp goes to see
Craven. Tells her about the script. Gist is “when the story dies,
the evil is set free,” he says. Explains the mythology of it.
Basically has to go through someone real, her, to become real. She is
like, “what the hell, man, that is all really happening to me.”
He's basically a tulpa. If you watch Supernatural, then
you know about this. A tulpa is a pretty cool concept that
comes from Tibetan Buddhism. The word means “emanation” or
“manifestation.” What it basically is is a being or object which
is created through spiritual or mental powers. Something that comes
into being because you believe it.
When he does come into
being, Freddy shows up wearing leather pants. He needs better
friends. Someone to tell him he looks ridiculous. Chuck Klosterman
once wrote something along the lines of if the world was ending in 10
minutes and a friend were to show up wearing leather pants, he would
spend all of his remaining time roasting friend in said leather
pants.
 |
| Fucking brutal |
There are two really
good scenes near the end. The first is when the kid's babysitter gets
killed. It is like the one in the original where Freddy drags the
girl around on the ceiling except more brutal. It's sort of a long
time coming and also out of nowhere. It's solid. The other is when
the actors start losing touch with reality. Saxon is there helping
Langenkamp when suddenly he starts calling her Nancy and saying that
she is his daughter and he is a cop. At first she resists it and then
that becomes reality. It's so dreamlike and cool. That shit is
fucking great.
There are also some not
so great scenes near the end. One is the highway scene. The kid and
the mom are running across the highway while a giant Freddy fucks
with them from above, picking them up with his knife finger and shit.
It looks like such shit. Like incredibly fucking bad. The green
screen looks absurd and she has the worst stunt double ever. It is
someone with a completely different body type and a very shitty wig.
It's not good.
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| Gross |
The final scene doesn't
age well either. After Freddie beats on Langenkamp, he gets to where
he is like going to eat the kid like a snake but Langenkamp saves
him. Again, looks like shit. Then the stupid stairs scene from 1
comes back. Another scene no one asked for. Basically the end is a
bunch of the worst Freddy scenes from the previous movies montaged
together into a bullshit fight scene. It ends when Freddys uses his
long snake tongue to try to choke Langenkamp out which we have seen
before. But the kid stabs it and Freddy ends up in a furnace and gets
cremated. Anticlimax. Then once they leave the dream, Langenkamp
finds Wes's script. It was all in there. Not the greatest ending but
it sure as shit was a lot better that Freddy's Dead: The FinalNightmare. I probably won't ever watch it again but it was pretty
good. Would have ended the series nicely. But then they had to do
Freddy vs. Jason. I'll get to my outrage on that one
eventually.
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| Pretty much says it all |
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