Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-2020! Theme one, part one: a favorite film from one of the past hosts!
(Chosen by me!)
Down in the suburbs of sleepy Springwood, Illinois, the parents hide a dark secret. About fifteen years ago, a child murderer by name of Fred Krueger got off on a technicality, free to roam the streets preying on their kids once more because some clerk didn't sign a document properly. Fearing the worst for their families and outraged at this failure of justice, the parents banded together into a mob, tracked Fred down to an old boiler room, tortured him, and eventually burned him alive in the main furnace. Having all partaken in this horrible deed, they swore a vow of silence, such that the remaining children wouldn't ever have to think if their tormentor again, outside the odd, disused skiprope rhyme. Now, years after the incident, for seemingly no reason, their teenaged-children start talking of a man hunting them in their dreams, a man whose description sounds suspiciously like that of one Mr. Krueger...
Alongside Jason's drowning, Chucky's true nature, and the sequelized why behind Michael Myers' senseless crimes, Freddy's backstory is one of the worst-kept secrets in the 80s horror pantheon. From almost the moment I read about him in a book on movie monsters back in elementary school, the exact hows and whys of his origin were made perfectly clear to me, and serious conversation around the films always alternates between gushing about how cool even the goofiest kills are, praising Robert Englund's consistent performances across eight installments, and talking up the psychological angle at play. Knowing Nancy, this first film's protagonist, is the daughter of parents who personally murdered Freddy in his mortal life, thereby giving birth to the dream demon she must fight against, I had this expectation in my head that A Nightmare on Elm Street would be this tight horror film preying on a duel set of fears about everyone lying to you about something obscurely horrible and trying to stay awake as long as possible lest something terrible happen in your dreams. It's considered a classic for a reason, and the initial entries in most horror franchises typically have something more going on than their thrill-focused follow-ups, so surely my impressions couldn't be wrong?
On the count of "Oh no, the scary man is gonna get me in my dreams!" A Nightmare on Elm Street Works. Wes Craven quite obviously had a lot of fun designing the moments when Nancy and friends slide from waking world to dream world, and messing about with mildly surreal imagery and quick effects-based gags to get the point across. Most of the film's dream effects are loaded into the initial assault on Nancy's friend Tina, leaving most later dream sequences with one big notable scare per each following, but they're all particularly good and memorable effects as a result. It's also got just enough over-the-top gore in differing variants between Tina and Glenn's deaths to qualify as nasty and mean-spirited in that very particularly 80s way. Heather Langenkamp sells Nancy's descent into sleep-deprived irrationality well, and Englund's performance flits between manic glee and straight up bloodlust like any good slasher villain should. Read the film as a surface level nightmare about something lurking in your subconscious that will kill you the second you show any weakness, and it's pretty tops.
Recognize the placement of Nancy's mother revealing her role in killing Krueger towards the end of the second act as an attempt to raise the stakes and speak to something more horrific beneath the suburban image of Elm Street, and the film becomes a little disappointing. Looking back at the opening movements and realizing none of the actors playing parents, Nancy's or otherwise, act at all like there's something amiss makes it feel like there's active missed opportunities at every corner. Nancy grew up with people who did the dark deed, she was pretty much always destined to fall victim to a nightmare like this sooner or later - there's infinite potential for the film to explore the more immediate, real life horror of people you trust acting like they're hiding something important as you fall into hopeless terror over a catastrophe only you can see. It's so instantly recognizable as a teenage fear, even I Was A Teenage Frankenstein mined its potential, yet A Nightmare on Elm Street only decides Freddy's background exists 50 minutes in for the sake of a creepy scene with Nancy's mom. What's more, it's sandwiched between an awkward attempt to evoke The Exorcists's hospital scene without any of the effectiveness, and the blowout scene of Johnny Depp turning into a human smoothie, leaving it feeling less like a vital character moment and more like a waystation on the way to more scares. If you're looking, there's coy hints towards something being wrong with Nancy's parents in their first scene, but it's brief and easily missable if you're not tuned into the truth. I'd much rather the movie top playing coy about this stuff and just be ABOUT it.
The climax washing out doesn't help too much. By the time Nancy confronts Freddy for the last time, the movie's become too much about working out the rules of how he works and how to exploit them for an assumption of dream logic to kick in, and Freddy spends his entire time in the supposed real world chasing Nancy around like any other slasher villain could. Her realization that she only need stop believing in him to escape doesn't come from any character motivated place, and isn't afforded any time to breathe before diving into the finale. Whether you watch the original happy ending as Craven wrote it, or the studio mandated last-second twist, the power that idea holds is lost any way you slice it, either to anticlimax or a franchise-staging promise rendering it false. The whole thing seems a little bit rushed, the result of creativity or the budget running out, and leaves the film with only the surreal image of Nancy's mother sinking into the bed as a solid note for its final movements.
It's still effective as horror, mind. Between the uncertain nightmare structure, the two lead performances, and the creative use of special effects to enhance the ominous atmosphere, Craven crafted a heart-clenching scary movie through and through. Problem is, I can see a masterpiece of dual-layered storytelling just waiting for someone to acknowledge its presence lurking at the corners, and instead of leveraging that angle for additional discomfort and shock, the film dives into the mechanics of the spooky dream man for the sake of a cheap, "Ah-HA, it really DOESN'T work like that!" gotcha. I'd call this an example of a good-verging-on-great film let down by a missed opportunity to be more. A friend of mine told me the remake might be more my speed, since it both adopts the originally intended child molestation backstory and integrates mistrust of the parents into the central story. Then again, the remake also isn't generally regarded as that good, so I might just be overthinking the spooky scary nightmare boy.
(For some reason I can't explain, the final gag with the Freddy sunroof falls dead on arrival. It's weird.)
3.5/5
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