Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

This begins promisingly as A Nightmare on Elm Street meets Pirandello, as Heather Langenkamp, star of the original Nightmare, begins to notice various sorts of domestic disturbances involving her family that seem provoked by the plans of writer-director Wes Craven and actor Robert Englund (both also playing themselves) to attempt yet another sequel in the series. Unfortunately, without even the most cursory effort to establish some notion of normality, the movie progressively gets duller and duller as its mechanical horror fancies spin themselves out; unlike Renny Harlin’s masterful and imaginative A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, which used the series’s baggage only as an excuse for its own fun and games, this one’s defeated by the rigid formula (1994). With Miko Hughes and John Saxon. 112 min. (JR)

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