Wes Craven's New Nightmare

It's been ten years and five mediocre sequels since Craven and the then-fledgling New Line Cinema released the original -- and superlative -- A Nightmare on Elm Street. Over the course of the series, the character of Freddy Krueger has grown into a horror film and cultural icon, trading in his ominous silences and rusty blades for supposedly witty one-liners and convoluted backstory, not to mention talking dolls and even a board game available from Toys `R' Us (which makes it a bit unnerving to recall that the character started out as a razor-appendaged child molester with third-degree burns). Craven's New Nightmare forgoes the quips and returns the series to a darker tone, giving Freddy a whole new (streamlined, almost) look and takes an inspired stab at breaking down the fourth wall between the real and the unreal. Craven's conceit in the new film is that once the original film series ended, the spirit of Krueger's character actually comes to life in the “real world” and begins to wreak havoc for stars Langenkamp, Englund, Saxon, and Craven himself (all of whom play themselves in the film). “How to get rid of Krueger once and for all?” Langenkamp asks Craven at one point. “That should be obvious. Make another movie,” is the deadpan reply. The self-reflexive nature of New Nightmare is a twist we haven't seen before, and it works well, up to a point. It's bizarre to see Craven, agent Marianne Maddalena, New Line president Robert Shaye, and others playing themselves up there on the screen -- it gives you the feeling that this is the horror genre's version of The Player. Despite this new spin on an old grave, however, Craven allows the last 30 minutes of New Nightmare to spiral down into the hack and slash cookie-cutter plotting of all the last five films. It consists of one long set-up with no final punchline, though New Nightmare obviously gets points for conceptual originality. What's next, interactive Freddy CD-ROMS?