Craven never aspired to make horror films.  He simply wanted to make movies.  Consider the highbrow inspiration of his shocking first film, the brutal Last House on the Left (1972).   It was based upon Ingmar Bergman’s Virgin Spring, a harsh tale of rape and revenge.  Hollywood quickly typecast Craven as a ‘master of mayhem’.  After several unsuccessful efforts to make non-horror films, Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) only reinforced his reputation as an exploitation director.   In Deadly Blessing (1981), he tackled a subject close to home, the horror of religious repression.  Craven portrays an Amish-like community gone awry, introducing his recurring theme of damaged and damaging families.  He was merely warming up for his most enduring cinematic villain, Freddy Krueger.

Any film that inspires six sequels obviously commands a certain power.  Craven recalls, “When I first wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street I was trying to account for something in human nature, in the human race, that had been here since day one and went all the way back to Cain and Abel, one half of humanity rising up to club the other, running right up to events in the world today.”  Craven connects audiences’ fascination with Freddy Krueger to his humanity, “We have to be aware that even the purest hero has the potential to be a real villain and within any villain there is the capacity for elements of humor, tenderness, vulnerability and love.”   Nevertheless, Craven argued with New Line Cinema president Bob Shaye about the film’s ending.  “In my version, the film ended with Nancy turning her back on Freddy and telling him he was nothing.  It showed that evil can be confronted and diminished.  That ending was very carefully thought through and had to do with a worldview of my own.”  Ultimately, Nightmare ended with the possibility of a sequel—sequels that would involve little or no input from Craven. 

We screen Wes Craven’s New Nightmare as the culmination of the Freddy series, but also as Craven’s answer to what others did with his original property.   New Nightmare anticipated the Scream series, commenting upon the phenomenon of horror films, audiences’ endless appetite for cinematic thrills, and critics’ charges that screen violence contributes to cultural debasement.  The actors, the filmmakers, and New Line executives play themselves, dealing with the ongoing wake of Freddy Krueger, movie merchandising icon. 

The Scream trilogy represents the third act in Craven’s career.  With the gore of horror films stretched to their limits, Scream turns the genre back on itself.   The self-reflexive nature of the films reveals an ironic, post modern mentality.  Ads for Cravens’ first film, Last House on the Left, urged audiences to keep reminding themselves, “it’s only a movie”.   Twenty five years later, the Scream films themselves remind us, “it’s only a movie”.  Does this mean Craven’s films trivialize evil?  Treating it as a joke?  Modernist critics may consider Scream the ultimate in irresponsibility, turning graphic screen deaths into cheap amusements.  So why did younger, post-modern filmgoers connect with Scream’s genuine psychic jolts and black sense of humor? 

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 caused permanent psychic and spiritual scars.  The magnitude of these atrocious acts can hardly be processed or explained.   What is an appropriate response?  Confusion?  Fear?  Outrage?  Revenge?  In the face of the random, the arbitrary and the unexplainable, a younger generation has often adopted an ironic distance, choosing humor to process unfathomable grief.  Some may call it a cop out.  The films of Wes Craven suggest it is coping. 

Essay by Craig Detweiler
Moderated byScott Derrickson
Quotations from Screams & Nightmares:  The Films of Wes Craven by Brian J. Robb, Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York, 1998
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