Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

IMDb plot summary: A demonic force has chosen Freddy Krueger as its portal to the real world. Can Heather Langenkamp play the part of Nancy one last time and trap the evil trying to enter our world?

Directed by Wes Craven. Starring Heather Langenkamp, Miko Hughes, David Newsom, and Wes Craven.

This is a fun departure from the series in that it's a meta movie *about* Heather Langenkamp, the actress who played the first movie's sole survivor. Wes Craven, Robert Englund, and other real-life movie people involved in the series also appear as themselves. In this version, Freddy is a real-life evil that can be contained in movies for a short time, so now they have to make another movie to contain him again. Unfortunately it's more fun as a concept than it is as an actual movie. The film is less than two hours but it drags, and it's much less clear than the first movie (the only other one I've seen in the franchise) exactly what our central character is supposed to do to defeat Freddy. Mostly the movie seems to be relying on the various sequences of creepy dream deaths to carry the movie, and one or two of those are pretty effective, but they frequently feel isolated or unconnected from the larger narrative -- like we're just waiting to fulfill our quota of creepy interactions before we can have the final showdown. It's a great idea for a sequel/reboot, but it didn't sell me on the series.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < Broken Embraces

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Persona

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > And Then There Were None

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < Plan 9 from Outer Space

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < How to Rob a Bank

Wes Craven's New Nightmare < Run Lola Run

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > The Hurt Locker

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Real Genius

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > Nowhere Boy

Wes Craven's New Nightmare > The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Final spot: #1978 out of 3245, or 39%.