Product: New Nightmare [VHS] (1994)
Rating: 5.0
Back to the original mould and melting master
It's not enough to bring Freddy Krueger back to life one more time after his official death. But Wes Craven has to come back too with the original characters, Nancy and her stubborn cop of a father. But we cannot really revive characters in a film so many years after their first appearance. So Wes Craven pushes what he calls only make believe one iota further and farther. Freddy was only a disguise for a real bad spirit in the world (Anne Rice has done that with her vampires and the Queen of the Damned, or Stephen King has also used this formula with his Dark Man in quite a few novels, liek The Stand, and short stories) and this really bad spirit has decided to come back to the real world once and for all and under his own identity if possible, or under that of Freddy Krueger if the minds of people are obsessed by his existence. This evil spirit is of course the devil himself and it will be revealed in the very last scene. So the actors are playing their real parts and Freddy is invading their real world. It is then make believe power two . And it is all the more efficacious and effective because the actors are themselves and no fake identities. Wes Craven brings along his particularly caustic mind and spirit and really gets the mickey out of medical authorities, doctors, women and blacks alike, and all the fake myth about the protection of kids first and for all against their own parents. Wes Craven definitely seems to accuse society to be the real culprit, the real cause of all problems with kids, and grown-ups too. This society that classifies everyone in one little box and that can put a six year old boy in the schizophrenia box without realizing that it is going to make him schizophrenic. The classification creates the items that are classified in it. Any taxonomy is our own creation, our own delusion and we must get rid of all these taxonomies to maybe recapture some sanity and balance. But since Wes Craven is back do not be surprised if you recognize some tricks like the crazy phone calls borrowed from Scream and so many other films (it always works anyway). That's part of the game. Wes Craven borrows from everyone, himself included, and just shakes the cocktail differently and changes dressings. The sauce always becomes slightly more piquante when it is served a second time by our waiter Wes Craven. He even visualizes the first destruction of Freddy, the lynching of this child molester who attacks males first to kill them, and women second to enjoy their slow suffering and their yelling. So Freddy Krueger is roasted to death a second time, and it is when his face becomes the horny - ah ah funny ! - head of the devil. Can we hope the saga is really finished now ? Probably not. There must be some forgotten sequel somewhere, though seven is a magical number and the point has been made that it is not movies that make children epileptic but all the Freddy Kruegers, Tommyknockers, Candymen, and other boogy boogy bogeymen overfed on beetle juice instead of milk, kept in the cupboards of our minds.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne