What the HELL happened to A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 7 Wes Craven's New Nightmare!!!

Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare

I have never hidden the fact I have a bone to pick with this movie. As I recently mentioned I even appeared on a podcast, Reels of Justice to condemn this film. It was either that or defending Part 3 as being the best of any horror sequel. I chose what I felt was a solid case to make versus an easy victory.

I chose poorly, I can admit, humbly. That I was not as prepared as I should have been and when I started going off the cuff, I lost my way and my arguments weren’t as strong as they should have been. At one point I was dug into as being someone that hated the film because it wasn’t holding my hand and giving me what I wanted. It was funny, but it also stuck with me because that is the one thing I champion against with criticizing and critiquing films. So the fact my arguments came off that way well. I’ll do better the next time I am lucky enough to return. I also want to give thanks to those guys and the acting attorney who schooled me. I learned a lot from them about the film I didn’t know before and I appreciate that a lot. They really know their stuff and I highly recommend giving them a listen, they deserve it.

Of course they didn’t change my opinion what so ever!

So lets get into it shall we? Because this is a curious film to get into and talk about. Mostly because of how it functions and presents itself. For this movie to happen a lot of grudges had to be set aside and peace made. Specifically between Craven and Shaye who had a creatively difficult relationship stimming all the way back to the original film.

I joked before about it but Bob Shaye really was the Moustafa Akkad of the Nightmare series. He saw the franchise potential in Freddy and wanted to keep it going, where as Craven wanted a one and done picture.

Funny enough a lot of the memorable and creepy scenes from the original film are thanks to Shaye He and Craven fought each other a lot on the original over scares in the film and ultimately its ending.

Freddy above Nancy’s bed knocking the crucifix down and reaching down to her? That was Shaye. Craven wanted to use a mechanical rig to achieve this. He wanted them to build a high end mechanical rig to pull off the practical effect. However Shaye suggested the more practical idea of using a sheet stretched out and Robert pushing against it. There was also the marshmallow staircase that Craven wasn’t a fan of. He thought it would be cheesy but Shaye thought it’d come off tense and add to the scare factor with the dream world traps Freddy would set. The man was right.

But most famously thanks to Sheye we had the twist ending. Wes wanted the film to end with Nancy driving off with her friends and a dream like haze over the camera. The image of a surreal dream coming to an end and hope triumphant over darkness. Shaye like Moustafa saw the franchise in front of him. He’d seen what Paramount did with their ending of Friday the 13th and knew they could turn this into a Franchise easily for New Line. So he pitched the idea of Freddy coming through the door taking the mother, the Freddy striped convertible and realization Nancy hadn’t defeated Freddy. Wes hated the idea, fought against it a lot. A. Lot. But ultimately Bob ands New Line won, granting us where we are now, talking about the next film in a long franchise. Even though Craven didn’t want a sequel, let alone three, then four, then five of them. However Shaye had reached out to him asking for ideas and Wes would grant some ideas but ultimately every time, Shaye shot them down. Likely because most of his ideas would end the series.

But here New Line sat. The 10th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street on its way. They’d killed Freddy off and laid him to rest. But Bob was considering the options of how to celebrate the films anniversary. Given the lackluster response and runaway train productions of the two previous films. They needed to try something new. So why not reach out to the original creator for this one?

So they did. Shaye reached out with a six pack and an olive branch. Approaching Craven, talking with him and pitching the idea of one more film. Craven was happy to do so. Even if the studio had no idea what they were about to awaken and put on screen.

The Story.

Welcome to meta-town Los Angeles. The film follows Heather Langenkamp as she is set to make a big screen return in a new Nightmare on Elm Street film as Nancy. As filming is underway Heather begins experiencing horrible nightmares of a darker more evil Freddy, killing crew members and taunting her through dreams. The film balancing her film life and real life challenges, from obsessed fans to stalkers, and a mild commentary on censorship and violence on screen in regards to the youth.

As the story moves along it seems Freddy is trying to break out into our world. Using Heathers son Dylan. Now he’s not doing as Alice had to suffer through and trying to posses her child. That was Freddy. This, is not.

As Wes Craven tells us in his turtleneck, sipping tea, on the sofa in his luxury home, looking and sounding like a professor explaining the craft of writing, a writers responsibility, and the life they breath into ideas. He gives some of the most pretentious dialogue to let us know that. Freddy is essentially a demon. A real presence that has attached itself to the character and enjoys Freddy enough to attach itself to the character and films. Wanting to break free of the genies bottle and into our world. Essentially. He spends most the time giving himself a Godlike Auteur presence, casting himself as an oracle prophet who controls reality through his typewriter, the true strength and magic of a writer. After years of Freddy being a comedian who made us laugh, he felt the creator needed to remind us the real beast he created and how this creator birthed a cosmic entity, carrying the large mass of ancient mythology on its back with all his lore. His words giving shape to this entity that became the demon and the films keeping it at bay.

For the casual viewer it’s a lot to take in and for fans, having the man who walked away from the franchise explain to you the jokester you loved and enjoyed growing up watching was none existent and the deeper created mythological evil he gave us was the true terror well. No one likes having their film explained to them, let alone getting a lecture on how they’re enjoying their heroes wrong.

But I digress…

The demon has a mission. It wants out of the films and into our world to wreak havoc, or something. So it must do what Freddy never did(but did in the 3rd film) and kill Nancy. So the demon kidnaps little Dylan and uses him to lure her into his realm. Whether it’s a dream world or hell, who can say. Because Freddy operated in dreams and this isn’t Freddy, but we’ll just say it is the dream world because that is safer than saying Heather took a literal handful of pills to rescue her son by falling asleep versus dying and going to hell to retrieve her boy.

Heather and the demon have a final battle and thanks to having been read Hansel and Gretel growing up. Dylan was able to trick and trap the Freddy demon into a furnace where he gets shoved into and burned alive. In dream hell. Heather saves her son, returns to the world of the living and decides to read the finished script of the movie to her son, where before she was against letting him be introduced to violent stories. Ending with a whimsical jaunt of music, and artistic film enjoyers huffing their own farts snapping their fingers in applause.

This is the last time I am going to get to talk about this movie, and I’m going to take that moment and air out a few things.

This movie whether you love it or hate it. Is pretentious and more a director giving a commentary on the state of horror than he is about saving his creation. It has interesting ideas, sure. The idea of doing meta horror wasn’t exactly a thing at the time. He ultimately admits he used this film as a prototype for it before making Scream which perfected his meta horror genre.

Wes had said and made it known before that, like Carpenter with Halloween. He was not a fan of the sequels and what they did with his creation. Granted that Akkad kept Michael to his core and how Carpenter crafted him. Where as Bob wanted to reinvent him and make an acceptable to the masses horror icon that would make money. 

The series creator wanted to undo the damage he felt was done to his nightmare child and return to a darker, scarier Freddy. By removing Freddy.

Wes Craven, when approached to return hesitated because he didn’t want to make another sequel. Especially since he despised wise cracking Freddy as created by Sideshow Bob. So he told them he would return, but only if he could make something different. A meta film about what happens when you turn an ancient demon into a pop culture joke. What happens when the monster you create haunts the cast and crew who made it long after its creation.

If you are picking up a distinct fragrance, that hints of boiled mushrooms and broccoli…Well…

Respect was going to be placed on the name of this demon that envied Freddy and loved Wes’s creation. He would be scary, serious and a constant threat. He would wear Freddy’s iconic sweater, hat and his own razor gloved hand. He’d wear a trench coat and the scariest thing of all, leather pants.

This had people a bit confused. To say the least.

But it still works. For what it is. Which isn’t Freddy.

It’s a demon, a creature which wants to emulate Freddy.

For a Nightmare on Elm Street, more specifically the 7th film in a long established series. This was a hard pill to swallow for a lot of fans. Especially when you are marketing a new villain and film, toward the fanbase on the franchises anniversary.

Jason Goes to Hell gave us a Friday the 13th with Jason as a side character in his own film that we never see materialize until the very end. It didn’t go over well with people because it was overly silly, killed a lot of the lore and made Jason into the creation of a deadite instead of the mongoloid nearly drowned child of a disturbed serial killing mother.

New Nightmare gave us a new world with none of Freddy’s rules, and Freddy without being Freddy. It’s a bold move to do that late in a series and had it been done earlier in the series? It easily would have been ripped apart. But this came out during a time of change in horror where Scream would later dominate because it held a mirror of perception to the face of the fans and used the essential rules we know of these films in a much more real setting which made it seem new and fresh. This film tried doing the same and sacrificed the titular character in place of a demon that served as both a metaphor for what is created and fed off of, changed through more films and its fanbase. It’s a meta film prototype marketed as a fresh Nightmare on Elm Street film, while trying to masquerade as a horror film when it’s more made as a higher brow take on horror.

Yes I feel it is pretentions, yes I and others wish it had been another Freddy invested feature. But it isn’t what made the film fail for me or others. And it certainly wasn’t because of not getting what you wanted and having your expectations subverted. It’s the fact this, as a Nightmare on Elm Street film does not work. As its own thing? Absolutely. I mean it is, as was pointed out to me as well, even in its title. A new Nightmare. Not Elm Street.

Again. As its own thing? Sure, go for it, it works. But what the film felt like, how it was marketed versus what it was in the end. Is a farse of the franchise and someones attempt to end what they wanted done after the credits in their first film. It simply doesn’t work and to the best I can do here, I’ll explain. Drugs will not be needed but they can certainly help.

The Entity vs Krueger

Freddy worked because he was real. Freddy was a child murderer, a dirty small town monster lurking among the towns people praying on their children. He put the town on edge and struck fear in parents everywhere and when he was released after finally being caught, and the parents took their vengeance on him. It felt real and it spawned a curse. He returned because of their vigilante justice and his evil, to torment the children of those who killed him. The parents were wracked with guilt over taking a life and covered this up. For years after when their children were allowed to grow up without fear? Only to have the killings start again and to hear the name Freddy Krueger. It awoke that fear in them again.

We saw with Nancy’s mother the result of her guilt, Leading to alcoholism and a split from her husband. The film showed us right through into the 3rd what this did, what Freddy did to their family. The fear of this monster. Created by the very parents who tried stopping the real monster, created an even more powerful one they were unable to defend their children from.

That is the base. The core of Freddy, his psychological Terror. It was played out to its absolute best and fullest in Freddy vs Jason when you are shown the entire town of Springwood had taken drastic steps medicating their kids, wiping out the memory of Freddy to keep them all safe. Even when the film was comical it still gave us the sincere feeling they absolutely would do anything to keep his name from even being muttered and they put away anyone, teen or otherwise who said his name and even mentioned a figure like him. That is Freddy and his power. The presence he carried both in the real world and the dreamworld.

New Nightmare tells us this never was. It was a film like any other in our world. By retconning the premise. Freddy’s core-claiming Freddy was never actually a human child-killer, but merely a temporary skin worn by an ancient shapeshifting…thing. It strips him of his human malice and tells us Freddy was never anything to fear from the start. They took a very real, terrifying villain and transformed him into a cosmic, mythical entity abstract of his character. Much like how Wes felt they took his creation and turned him into a wise cracking joke instead of the dirty old man he saw from his window as a child digging through his trash.

Instead of Heather fighting a specific, sadistic killer that KNOWS her name, KNOWS her history. She is instead fighting a generic primordial demon that is simply executing a checklist for cross dimensional travel into our world. By changing Freddy from who he was and into this shapeshifter, it trades intimate human horror for abstract folklore and a generic possession “It wants in our world” story.

Freddy is a presence that was always felt in his films, but none more stronger than the first film. There is an escalation with Freddy and the stakes are always clear and become more dire. This film and its monster worked more ambiguously with a weaker escalation by altering the rules to a much more messier concept.

Freddy works off the franchises core strength of creative dream logic. If you fall asleep, he can hurt you-and if you die in your sleep? You die in the real world. Shifting from trapped inside creative dreams and a world we feel safe in of our own creation, to a mother dealing with a sick possessed child, the film pivots away from its core specific mechanical identity that defined the entire franchise and moved into a different subgenre full of its own tropes.

Moving from established rules and mechanics of how Freddy worked to something else-something new? Sure it can work. But the execution in the film was poorly, weakly executed. Simply because the demon operates on incredibly, glaringly vague and constantly shifting parameters.

Stick with me here.

The demon can manifest claws into the real world to kill Chase while he is driving. Silence yourselves I know the film shows he was beginning to struggle to stay awake. You can argue yes he dozed off and demon thing killed him. But this isn’t Freddy who operates in the dream world. That’s just in the film. Not our reality. This thing would have had to manifest itself into our world to do this. Now, the stronger argument? Wes’s own rules. This is a smart possession horror. This isn’t a silly sequel in a franchise it’s a new nightmare set in our real world reality. The film waves off the fact this man was murdered and our cops are played as incompetent. If a body is brought in, from a traffic accident. With 4 distinct razor sharp claws dug in and dragged down his chest. With no debris from the crash present having done so? They’d be investigating this immediately. It would be classified under suspicious circumstances. Add to this the double homicide of two crew men who were ‘killed by a set malfunction’ which was the glove, a 4 fingered mechanical device killing them. That makes this three homicides within 24 hours. Is it nit picky and are you smirking at how that’s a stretch? It isn’t when Wes has set this film in our world operating off of our rules. The whole concept was pitched as what if this happened in the actual grounded world?” The film handles it by ditching its own rule set and just waving it off, dismissing it as “Hey it’s freddy, don’t worry about it.” But it isn’t Freddy. You established clearly this is not Freddy. It’s a demon. A demon bound to its trapped ‘genies bottle’ dimension wanting into our world.

Which brings in another point people have made before and further strengthens the weakness in this plot and how the monster works. Perhaps the cops did not investigate the murders. Which are obvious murders. Because the demon is influencing them. His presence is vast and far reaching that if it is able to influence Wes Craven to write a new movie for it to be brought back.

If it can reach into our world and murder people

If it can trigger an earthquake and slash Heathers walls with Freddy like claws

If it can manifest as multiple Freddies into our world

If it can clearly drag a woman to the ceiling of a hospital room and kill her without the need for sleep

If it can manifest an army of Freddys, a glove from the sky and begin physically manipulating an awake child in our world over traffic

If it can pull Dylan into its realm and leave a door open for heather to follow

Are you kind of getting it?

A demon, claiming to be trapped within its realm, a genie in the bottle. But it has the power and reach to perform all of these feats. To clearly influence mass crowds of people and physically interact with our world. Exactly what importance then is Heather and how exactly is she keeping it from entering into our world when it very clearly already is?

But. Somewhere in the crowd. I hear a voice. What’s that? Freddy did the same in his own franchise? In part 2??

Yes. Yes he did. Freddy manifested himself into our world, well his world without the need for sleep.

During the pool party leading to the climax of the film. Freddy has manifested into our world as a being. He got his strength from Jesse. Each kill made gave him strength and allowed him to further possess Jesse. “You’ve got the body, I’ve got the brain” Freddy came out into the world and attacked Jesse’s not girlfriend because he was gay. Freddy needed an anchor to appear in this world and Jesse was that anchor. So he attacked the girl, then went out to the pool party and began attacking everyone. Eventually they try fighting him and nothing works. He Homer Simpson walks away into the bushes, setting them on fire and vanishes to an industrial factory. There was no meta world high brow horror. It was slasher film logic. He had a clear conduit into our world.

This demon had none. Oh, what? Dylan? Could the same case be made that his possession of Dylan allowed this? No. Because he was already manifesting himself far before that. It was incidental. The movie wanted to be smarter than it was by establishing new rules that gave Wes a smug look by subverting expectations. By following another established group of tropes that didn’t work within his own world he helped create and took years establishing itself.

But again the argument is. This is a new nightmare. It’s not elm street, the franchise. So how exactly does that work? You tell audiences to forget years of an established franchise and character and watch a new character obsessed with the character you love. Only the threat its supposed to possess has no grounded rules it follows let alone stakes. Its freely moving around in our world, but wants to be in our world. It needs to kill Heather to enter our world, but its already in our world. It wants to kill people and cause terror in our world. IT’S ALREADY DOING IT!!!

The whole idea is pointless and makes no sense.

But the biggest sin this film commits is the same Ridley Scott faced with Prometheus.

The Climax.

Setting aside the weak rules and supposed wall keeping this thing from our world. This is as Wes and those before him in other Franchises have all stated. A return to real terror. This was not going to have a quipping Freddy, a comedian Freddy you could laugh at.

And yet, the climax exist. Every appearance of the demon as Freddy, it’s comical. I don’t mean in design or leather pants. I mean in its taunting of Heather. From the face it makes popping from her husbands coffin, to his joking with Dylan before killing the nanny.

The shapeshifter goes from a supposed shadow threat lurking around, to a flat out clown by the end when it starts roleplaying Hansel and Gretel. A trail of snacks and pills, the demon shouting “Come here I got some gingerbread for ya”, the comical tongue whip and his face when he sees them trying to stab it then cut it off.  It’s facial expressions between that and its hands removal…This is a multi-dimensional demon. An ancient being of immense strength and from a land of pure unadulterated evil. And it gets tricked into a giant furnace. Which it designed, and could not escape.

Freddy. When defeated. Each film when the final fight comes. Each film drops a small seed hinting at how he can be defeated. A goal. A way to strip him of his power and defeat him.

This real evil being in our world, from an actual factual dimensional hell. Is defeated in its own realm with no real idea how to do so, or if it would work. Past just sheer dumb comical luck.

Ridley Scott wanted to make a Prequel to ALIEN. What we got was a smart scifi film detailing the engineers as he saw them and telling a new story within his universe, which is shared with Blade Runner by the way. It was new and used more grounded tech to make it seem more real. The film abandons its concept once it remembers this is supposed to tie into ALIEN. So we have a gigantic oversized face hugger face fucking an engineer and giving birth to a proto xenomorph in the final seconds. Where the rest of the film was content on removing itself from the first film. By a few hundred years and in its story. It felt tacked on and like he genuinely was reminded by the studio what he was supposed to be making instead of playing around in his world. Is it still a good movie? It’s interesting, until the climax. Same case with this film.

I said this was going to be likely the last time I get to talk about this movie. So I had to get that all out because I really feel this movie, as part of the franchise is so far removed as to not work what so ever.  From it’s premise and weak established rules, to the idea it was a return to Freddy being scary. When it’s not even Freddy.

It just doesn’t work, for me. And a lot of people including critics, all of whom likely can and have made smarter arguments.

So when I say it’s a bad Nightmare movie? I mean it in the same sense as Friday the 13th 4 when they removed Jason and brought in a copy cat. It’s interesting, sure. But a bad entry in the series. But still not the same as this. This was, as I was reminded, and everyone keeps saying when defending it. Not a Freddy movie.

Which is. It’s core issue. It’s why fans hated and turned on John Carpenter for making Halloween 3 and giving them evil irish people using druid magic and cyborgs. You make an interesting, completely different film in the middle of your established franchise. Yeah people are going to be upset they didn’t get what they were expecting in a film labeled HALLOWEEN 3.

It doesn’t make you unrealistic, hard headed or simple to expect what you were told you would get. You say you were tired of the sequels being silly so you want your character to be a truly scary threat again? Good lets see it. Instead you turn them into a demon that’s still joking around. Don’t like it? Well you didn’t get it and we can’t help you.

It’s a poor excuse and a bad execution to toss out in the middle of an established franchise, with an established character an entirely new creature tying it to your creation, getting away with it by saying ‘It doesn’t take place in the film world but our world, so it works”

Well for some people it does. Obviously. But for others it doesn’t. Strongly doesn’t.

I don’t hate it. I hate what it was calling itself and felt it is out of place. The best comparison for this film I feel, after reflecting and hammering out another ungodly near 60 pages now. Is something that more films have done and suffered unfairly from. But also deservedly.

I think the most famous example? Would be Dawn of the Dead remake.

A classic Romero zombie film. People trapped in a mall, battling to survive, fighting their own kind on top of an unyielding undead force. The movie divided fans and claimed new fans. They changed everything about the zombies and the dynamic of the tight knit group of the original. Zombies could run, baby stillborn babies turned zombies, people turned quicker, a larger group with people you didn’t genuinely care for and more chaotic action. Fans hated this because it was different, while others embraced it because of its brutal intensity and new fresh take on zombies.

Very similar films. Core changes to what we had known and were expecting. Critical division with the audience you were hoping to please and surprise. Both had an easy fix if you think about it.

Take the premise of both films. Tell it to someone. Sell them on a movie, about a demon that is trying to break into this world through horror films that drew it out from its dimension into our world and how it is fighting to free itself.

Remove Freddy from it, remove it entirely from the franchise and let it be its own thing. An original IP.

Same with Dawn of the Dead. Take the film, give it a new title, completely removed from the series as a remake or reboot. Let it stand as its own thing. I promise you an entirely different reaction.

To have people tell you this is the best of the elm street films. Which they do say, is false and unfair. They and critics hail it for being different and removed from the series. But include it in the series its removed from and tell you to enjoy it by embracing the new and forgetting what you want, what you were sold and lied about, and just enjoy a new experience completely removed from the franchise it is a part of.

Sure Jan.

There were so many places this film could have gone. But it simply didn’t. There were interesting ideas they could have played with but didn’t. The demon just wasn’t fleshed out. You had Robert Englund in the movie as himself, and did nothing with him. These actors play themselves and are never utilized in any way that would have added to the tension. I like the idea the demon had to remove everyone in its way, which would mean the cast and creators of the franchise. Use Wes to create a doorway with the script. Have the demon kill Robert Englund so it can truly become Freddy, and have it face off against Heather as its newly crowned identity as Freddy. Anything but what they did. It could have been scary. But it wasn’t and never got even to the point of a jump scare.

My standing aside, was the film actually a success? No.

The film cost roughly $8 million, keeping the budget as usual close to the chest. After its theatrical run ended the film make a whopping $18 million. It was the lowest grossing film in the entire franchise.

Did the MPAA step in and slice away at it? No, What about the studio famous for butchering and its mountains of alleged cocaine? Not one bit of interference. How? Why? Well. Casting Bob Shaye to play himself does kind of put the studio at a bit of a stand back and let it happen position.

Critics and fans were divided. Hugely divided. Some critics raised a glass over the high brow smart take on horror calling it a welcome change to a tired predictable genre. While other critics tore into its comedic tone, lack of threat and severe lack of Freddy. They found the plot and film boring, and  they along with fans hated Dylan. Child actors get it rough, they either nail it or they come off cringy and unwanted. Any time you put a kid in your movie, it’s going to divide audiences. See The Mummy Returns for proof on that.

The praise the film received was less to do with it being an original ‘horror’ film and more to do with its take on the horror genre as well as the toll it takes on its creator and stars. So they enjoyed the message and what It represented, while fans embraced it as a needed change from the old and tired. It just wasn’t praised for its character. It felt unneeded in a franchise that had been laid to rest with Freddy’s Dead,

But I can still see it working. Freddy died in the films, this thing was mad. But the film itself retcons a lot of the sequels openly so it becomes more an implied thing left to you the viewer to insert. Which is still an argument I don’t like when it comes to film criticism. When you the viewer are left to fill in the pieces and give weight to the script and concept where the director and film didn’t bother to do so. The points become moot and rely more on subjective opinion which goes nowhere. People make the argument the reason the demon is able to interact with our world is because the sudden disappearance of Robert Englund from the film. They believe the demon killed him or possessed him ultimately becoming Freddy so therefore it had a foothold in our world which is why by the time it got to Dylan it didn’t need to rely on sleep like earlier. Well again like I mentioned it’d be cool if that were the case. But nowhere in the film, or the script do they even suggest it. So it just becomes, like a lot of arguments made, fan made subjective opinions. It’s why I try not to get to into it with debating surreal films because you need a different set of eyes with that and believe me people will make some crazy ass near biblical like theories on those films and call you simple minded for debating them. I’ve had to debate my sister and Adrian several times with why I dislike some surreal films but embrace others. I don’t hate them because I don’t get them, or because I want a traditional experience. I just look for it to be entertaining, and make sense. Which again and for the last time. This film isn’t the worst thing ever. It’s just a poor sequel that would do better as something other than the skin it tried sliding itself into. The whole meta horror thing is an interesting take. But it also grew to fall into the same tropes and plot holes as what it tried to rise away from.

I apologize if I repeated myself and went off. I just have a lot to say when it comes to films in these franchises. Much in the same way even though I’ve left Star Wars behind largely from where I was with it. I’ll still sit down and talk for hours on end about the films, powerful scenes and subjective topics on it. It’s fun discussing film but when it comes to trying and looking for the exact words. It can be a struggle and that’s why for me writing is the easiest. It would likely READ better and more coherently if I edited this shit. But fuck that. It’s all Gonzo baby, and that’s what I do best.

So did this film kill off the franchise? For a time. New Line was working on bringing Jason and Freddy together and were finally getting closer to that reality. Scream was about to hit and reshape and revive the horror film industry. The MPAA was finally at its end with horror and the two parted ways.

We got a truly great send off for Robert Englund’s Freddy with Freddy vs Jason. The movie gave both groups of fans everything they could have ever asked for. I’m thankful it didn’t get more sequels. After that we had the remake of Friday the 13th,  later on the Nightmare on Elm Street remake as well.

Now THAT film I can say I hate. That film needed a shapeshifting demon. It also needed a lot more. But that’s a film I’ll review when we cover remakes and reboots.

For now at the end of this franchise. It didn’t suffer nearly what Halloween and Friday the 13th did. But it suffered differently, and in some cases a lot worse.

Honestly I’d prefer a protective egotistical producer over what the studios did. Hell either of those two are still preferred over the MPAA and the power they were given and should never have had. I can say I’m still happy to be a fan of Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy was my hero growing up and I’ve seen all the films enough to quote it and laugh while watching it. True I don’t watch this one nearly as much as I do the others. But I still do get curious and have to wonder, will it hit differently the older I get? Will it have aged better?

Nope! Mind not chained lol

But getting to discuss this film and have someone defend it to me, and make me consider things I hadn’t before? I will always appreciate that and urge people to listen to those guys on Reels of Justice. Even if they again. Did not validate my parking.

As we come to a close with Freddy and his end. We now come to our final article. One that I can say I am not looking forward to what so ever. Which is fitting. Because of all franchises. Ones I love and ones I can’t stand, and some I wonder how the hell they keep going.  None of them compare too or come close to the absolute abysmal hell that is, the Hellraiser Franchise.

Prepare for that, and thank you again if you’ve stuck it out this far. I do appreciate it.