I'm a huge Wes Craven fan, so I was expecting to like this, but I didn't expect it to unsettle me as much as it did. It's silly in the special way Craven movies are, and often very funny. Lots of the special effects look weird and dated (though they do look more 2002 than 1994, so congrats I guess), and for maybe 90 minutes of the 110 minute runtime I thought this felt like the buildup to a buildup, the first ten minutes of a suggestion of fear stretched out a little too long. but when the final climax starts up, I have to tell you, it scared the hell out of me. In the back of my mind…

Another perfect movie by Wes Craven! Everything about this movie was so great. From the moment it begins with the similar beginning and feel of the first Nightmare film to the last meta moment between the characters looking at the script, this movie hit all the right marks for me. The meta humor landed perfectly for me and all the actors did a fantastic job, I'll give them that. This honestly should've been the movie we got to end the entire franchise now that I'm thinking about it, but this is considered a spin-off and not part of the original Nightmare timeline from what I read online.

The entire film got back its creepy vibe from the first and I…

Hooptober 4.0 - 2017 - Film #14

Earlier today I was reading a story about a man whose penis was stolen in 2012. Fei Lin, a 41 year old man from China, was sleeping peacefully when he was rudely awoken by a bunch of men. They shoved a bag over his head, pulled down his pants and then before he knew it they were gone. Taking the bag off his head, he looked down only to be completely shocked that his penis was missing. The thieves had chopped off his dick and had run away with it into the night. The police never found the men who did it, nor did they find his cock.

So, when Freddie's bladed glove…

Every kid knows who Freddy is. He's like Santa Claus, or King Kong.
-Heather Langenkamp

Probably my favorite Nightmare on Elm Street sequel as it might be even better written then the original. Wes Craven comes back for the 7th film and manages to recreate the tone and mood from his 1984 original. What I think is so ingenious is that he does this not by ignoring what went wrong with all the previous sequels, but actually using it for his story.

Craven knows that Freddy Krueger killing the Elm Street teens in their sleep has been overdone and it has become to familiar. It needs to be something that our protagonist knows is a threat, but will be unbelievable…

There really isn’t a review I could write to do justice to the relationship I have to this movie. It came out when I was like 15 years old so it was that time when I was getting physically close to being able to see R rated movies on my own, but I still technically couldn’t unless I got sneaky and oh say, purchased a previously viewed copy from my local video store, but until that happened I was utterly OBSESSED with this movie and everything about it. The poster. The trailer. The marketing. I ate it allllll up and wanted more. I read the novelization over and over just trying to get it all in until I had access…

A lot of times I have a spiral notebook on the coffee table while I'm watching a movie, mainly to write down a quote I find hilarious or the name of a list I have to add the movie to once I find myself on Letterboxd again. I thought I would take the time to let everyone know what I wrote while watching Wes Craven's New Nightmare.

An almost blank page with four possible list additions and the single thought - "crotch grab, SO CGI!"

New Nightmare came out in 1994. This is an awkward time for horror films, a film can either be chock-full of the best practical special FX after a decade of perfection, or riddled with a…

Meta, but not insufferably so.

This movie was on my shortlist for viewing during this Halloween season anyhow, but discovering that Monday was the 25th anniversary of its release meant that talking about the movie sometime this week was only the logical thing to do. Henceforth, last night I saw Wes Craven doing the meta thing even before Scream.

The movie is set in “the real world” and bad things happen to Heather Langenkamp and her (fictional) family as Craven wishes to return to the NOES series, but not to help New Line Cinema resurrect a once-popular series of slashers. Turns out, horror stories serve an important purpose in real life and Freddy Krueger being killed off in Freddy's Dead:…

31 for 31 #21

At long last, this project has brought us it's second five star movie (spoiler: unless one of the remaining ten has aged spectacularly well and is much better than I remember, this is also our last five star movie.)

Wes Craven is a legendary name in horror cinema. His 1972 The Last House on the Left combined the basic story of a Ingmar Bergman masterpiece with a horror movie sensibility and the grime off the bottom of his own shoe. It's impact on horror cinema was seismic, ushering in the era of cruel, nasty filmmaking and the rape-revenge movie.

His 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street we've covered, but it's impact I didn't touch on. The…

It’s said that the subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Two years before Scream changed the genre with self-effacing references, Craven turned his art inward on itself to kaleidoscopic proportions. Robert Englund and Heather Langenkamp live in a world like our own where they are known primarily for playing Freddy & Nancy. She dreams of her husband’s death and it comes true. She wakes up with lacerations just like Nancy. She reads a script that describes her in that same moment reading that same script. That’s some Charlie Kaufman shit right there. This film is the most original outing by Craven since the original Nightmare. It’s far from perfect, but his ideas seem clearer, the quality of…

95

"Miss me?"

Fantasy meets reality. Your definitive past chasing you to all places. An icon brought to life, only meaner and scarier than ever. Meta horror before Craven's Scream. Robert Englund can paint. John Saxon is a legend. Wes Craven playing himself, peppering in some wisdom and brilliance on multiple levels. A true love letter to the series and to the horror genre, this is a top rate genre fare that no one should miss. Absolutely essential to comprehend Craven's immense love for the horror genre and what we truly fear.

Raking in just under $20 million though on a $8 million budget, New Nightmare was perhaps too ahead of its time. The horror genre was only beginning to…