Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Freddy Krueger isn’t dead, he simply gone post-modernist. That’s the bizarre twist that cult director Wes Craven has given to his cash-cow horror creation in this painfully intellectualized epilogue to the Nightmare on Elm Street series. In a way, you’ve got to give Craven high marks for sheer gall – not everyone would take a basic slasher-movie concept and turn it into a ponderous thesis on contemporary film theory. But when it comes to revitalizing a moribund genre, Craven earns only an E for effort.

In this film-within-a-film-within-a-film-with-a-film puzzle box, Craven has gone crawling back to the original Nightmare in an attempt to grapple with the meaning of terror, but he succeeds only in totally confusing his audience. Original cast members Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund and John Saxon play both themselves and their characters from the first film in a storyline that threatens to give the term “self-referential” a bad name. Also along for the deconstructionist joy ride are filmmakers Craven and producers Robert Shaye and Marianne Maddalena. Depending upon your outlook, this piece of gamesmanship is either daringly audacious or artistically vapid. Unfortunately, it seems as though the latter may be more accurate – New Nightmare wears thin after 30 minutes as it turns into a post-graduate bore that fails to deliver the basic blood-curdling chills. By the time he finally appears on screen, even Freddy Krueger seems muzzled into lackluster silence by the movie’s self-induced sense of muddled posturing.

Of course, if you see this film in a packed theater, the audience can offer some real entertainment. For example, at the showing I attended there was an on-going debate about who was who (including, even, some random confusion about who played Freddy). It’s not often that you see this many people engaged in a loudly vocal discourse on post-modernist aesthetic theory. Besides, the “Freddy Bobbitt” joke that one guy yelled out was pretty funny.

Scream

Like it or not, the slasher genre is back with a Scream. Wes Craven's new entry has already proven successful enough in the States to insure a slew of copycat productions as the teeny-kill horror movie once again becomes a hot Hollywood prospect. But the odd (and distinctive) aspect about Scream is neither its gore nor high body count. Instead, the movie invokes such a thick, irony-laced approach to the deconstruction of the entire genre that a casual viewer might rightly be afraid that there will be a pop quiz after the screening. The whole thing could have been retitled Freddy Krueger Meets the Tenure Committee.

Scream begins with a basic outline of most modern horror films. A home-alone teenager (Drew Barrymore) finds herself taunted by a series of increasingly threatening phone calls from an apparent psycho. The caller forces her into playing game of horror movie trivia in which the winner is allowed to live. Unfortunately, she stumbles on a tricky Friday the 13th reference and discovers that this is one test graded by something more severe than the curve.

A massive manhunt ensues, though the only clue to the killer is his peculiar use of a mask based upon the Edvard Munch painting The Scream (arty chaps, these wackos). Increasingly, a trail of evidence (and corpses) leads the police to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a high schooler whose mother had been butchered in a grisly case a year earlier. Is Sidney a potential victim, or a ticking emotional time bomb? Since the local cops are all blunder heads, it is up to a TV news reporter (Courteney Cox) to discover the truth. Besides, the reporter already has a book deal lined up on the side, so she is highly motivated.

But the basic plot quickly gives way to a torrent of self-referential commentary. Though the psycho in Scream sees himself as the world's leading expert on slasher movies, he is obviously working in a very competitive environment. The whole town has seen virtually every teeny-kill pic ever made and the local citizens routinely nitpick as if they were preparing for a seminar at the British Film Institute.

Scream is an overt continuation of the theoretical musings that previously dominated Wes Craven's New Nightmare. But while New Nightmare floundered in its neo-Godardian posture (the movie was essentially a variation of Godard's Contempt), Scream manages to keep enough action on the screen to hold the average attention span. It also manages some genuinely funny moments, especially through its surprisingly effective undercutting of the killer's physical prowess. At its best, Scream plays like a modern version of Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (though not quite as totally sassy).

Of course, the fact that terms like "deconstruction" and "neo-Godardian" can be applied to a slasher film is an odd tribute to director Craven's eccentric position in the horror genre. Craven has always been a little too smart and tasteful for his own movies. After all, his production of Last House on the Left was based upon Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. So it is not surprising that Craven is now seemingly hell bent upon redoing the entire French New Wave.

Such weird ambitions is what makes Craven's Scream a decent bit of intellectual fun. But if he gets anymore self-referential, then we may have to ship this boy off to France.