Review Detail

Wes Craven's New Nightmare is a rare gem in the latter Nightmare on Elm Street movie, a self-aware take on the slasher. While the film's concept is intriguing and the execution is dark. the pacing is much too slow when stacked up against its thrills, resulting in fewer rewatches in subsequent years.

Ray Danger manages, much like his work on the prior installments, to create a more streamlined, ferocious pace with his edit. Heather is on an insomniac rollercoaster from the opening dream, the story relentlessly carrying the audience to the final dream.

Some of the core film's elements still don't sit as right when compared to the original three or films though, namely Freddy's makeup design. While Ray cut out many of the goofier elements from the original source material, for some reason the makeup quality degraded significantly from the mid 80s, and this is something that an edit unfortunately cannot fix.

Still, this New Nightmare cut has now entered my official circulation of Nightmare films, capping off the surreal series.