A Nightmare on Elm Street

A note: during this month Tuesday’s reviews will be posted a day late as I go out of town for work those days. Guess you’ll just have to wait til Wednesdays won’t ya? Also, you’ll notice a bit of a change of tone in this review. I've decided that a plain old review is something I've already done. I have in the past tried to keep my reviews short and sweet, but as I watched tonight’s film I had lots of insights I thought I’d share. So screw it, here you go: long and rambling. Blame not having to write college papers anymore. Moving along…

10/2: Tonight I watched Wes Craven’s slasher classic “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” I could have sworn I hadn’t seen this before (weirdly enough) but everything seemed incredibly familiar. Not sure if that means I have indeed seen and I was, I dunno, drunk or something or if this movie is so much in the public consciousness that I feel as though I’ve seen it before. But I digress.

Craven here creates a film that embodies the slasher to the fullest extent. It’s ridiculous, over the top, occasionally quite funny (re the Freddy Krueger meets “Home Alone” scene where our “final female” Nancy gets her booby-trapped revenge on the Christmas-sweatered mad man. Speaking of, Craven really enjoys his whacky revenge tales doesn’t he? See “Last House on the Left”), and has a killer that can’t be stopped. It’s a brilliant stroke to have the villain’s arena be the dream world; Everyone needs to sleep sometime and Freddy (played masterfully by Robert England, I might add) dwells right there.  While it may seem a bit of a tired idea at a glance, it is only because Craven and this film were at the forefront of the slasher and gave influence to all the imitators that came since.

At the core of “Nightmare,” though, there is something much deeper that I think Craven is trying to say: we are all fucking idiots. Nancy is an idiot (oddly enough the least so), her friends are idiots, Johnny Depp (her boyfriend) is an idiot with narcolepsy apparently,

Narcolepsy.

and above all, every single adult in this godforsaken town is a gigantic frickin’ idiot. See, if Nancy doesn’t seem like an idiot, it’s only in comparison to all the other idiots she’s surrounded by. Sure, usually people are idiots in horror, especially the slasher. But I think Craven is making a conscious statement on how much we are willing to ignore and pass off as “not possible.” Even with the absolute obvious staring them right in the face Rod, Nancy’s parents, and even Nancy up until the very end refuse to acknowledge it.  And you know nearly all of us would do the same thing; we really are that stupid. And that, my friends, is the human condition (well, probably. Maybe).

But none more stupid than this guy:

We don’t know what dreams are or where they come from? Ah, damn good thing you’re head of the sleep disorders department sir.

8/10