Meet the new Fred, same as the old Fred.
I wonder when the term “Final Girl” first came into use. Probably as soon as we started critically evaluating the horror films of the eighties, so as early as 25 years ago I suppose. It’s a term that any horror fan understands, even if they have never encountered it before. In fact, I suspect that we all have our favorite final girls. Jamie Lee Curtis is probably near the top of most lists. Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton are slightly outside of the mold, but they still count. I’ve grown partial to Maika Monroe in recent years, but my all-time favorite is Heather Langenkamp. Playing Nancy Thompson in Nightmare on Elm Street I & III, and herself in New Nightmare, it’s not surprising that Langenkamp holds my top spot since she’s the foil for my favorite horror villain, Freddy Krueger. She’s not the greatest actress, really, but she embodies what makes a great final girl: She is moral, brave and resourceful. She doesn’t ask to be in this dangerous situation, but she is determined to figure out a way to end it for good, saving herself and everyone around her from the threat. It’s that juxtaposition of innocence and defiant determination that makes the formula work so well, that the power imbalance between hero and villain is so outsized but she never gives up or loses hope. Craven would use the same template for his next final girl, Neve Campbell, in Scream.
Langenkamp is at the center of New Nightmare, and her earnest performance is a huge reason why the movie is as effective as it is. She plays herself, the actress that portrayed Nancy Thompson in the Nightmare movies. She’s married, with a young son (Dylan), and focusing on lower-profile TV work. Her nerves are becoming frayed due to a series of prank calls, a recent rash of earthquakes and, naturally, some disturbing nightmares. What’s more, her son is having trouble sleeping as well, and acting more and more erratic. As you might have guessed, this all has to do with Freddy. Wes Craven, also as himself, is writing a script that mirrors the events of the movie, and he seems to understand that some ancient evil has chosen to embody the character he created and enter our world. That’s an interesting concept, but it pretty much just translates into walking Krueger back to the way he was originally conceived in the first movie. He even busts out a line calling Langenkamp a bitch. It would have been great to see a truly new dimension to the character, but Craven is much more interested in simply erasing the last few movie’s worth of damage done to his most famous creation.
At one point, Heather is on a talk show where the host is asking about the horror series, and she sheepishly states that she was really only involved with numbers one and three. You can clearly construe Craven washing his hands of the rest of the films, even before Robert Englund comes traipsing out in the makeup, acting like a buffoon for the audience’s gratification. The meta element of the film is intriguing, but the real point seems to be restoring Freddy to his place as an icon of terror after he had devolved into a sassy quip machine with his own talking plush doll and a pop album (no, seriously). Englund does a good job playing both himself and the “new” Krueger (and goofy Krueger). He even replays one of his greatest hits, killing Dylan’s babysitter by dragging her up the wall and ceiling the same way he killed Nancy’s best friend in Nightmare I. It remains an incredibly scary set-piece, the scariest in the film. Which is kind of the problem. As much as I appreciate Langenkamp’s terrific performance, and enjoy seeing Englund, Craven and John Saxon as themselves, and even kind of like the gimmicky scenes where we see the script and it is describing the action as it is happening, I can’t consider New Nightmare wholly successful because it doesn’t come close to the horror achieved by the best entries into the series. I sympathize with Wes Craven, and indulge him this opportunity to reclaim his greatest creation, but I don’t think he was fully successful in doing so.
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