Here's the creepy dream that inspired Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Director Wes Craven is an icon of the horror genre and is behind such classics as The Hills Have Eyes and Scream. Craven himself was a former academic who had little affinity for the genre, but after the shock success of 1972's Last House On The Left, found himself somewhat typecast in horror. He turned that to his advantage, using the movies to explore interesting themes and concepts, in addition to having fun crafting setpieces or scaring audiences.
With Wes Craven - who helmed several TV movies - had little interest in sequels but had already signed the rights away to the series and Freddy Krueger. Craven rejected A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 after greatly disliking the concept, and outside of penning an early draft of A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, he had little involvement with the follow-ups. Of course, later entries turned Freddy into something of a comedian, which greatly lessened his scare factor.
Craven later returned to his most famous creation for New Nightmare. This sequel was intended to celebrate the franchise's tenth anniversary in 1994, but when he first signed on, the filmmaker didn't have a clear concept. He rewatched the first six movies to look for a narrative thread to follow, only to realize the series didn't really have one. New Nightmare famously went meta and followed the creators of the series - including Craven himself - being haunted by The Entity, an ancient demonic being taking Freddy's form and looking to break through from fiction to reality. It was a genius idea, and according to the director in the book Screams & Nightmares: The Films of Wes Craven (via Nightmare On Elm Street Companion), it was an eerie dream that inspired the whole story.
This particular dream involved Craven at a party with people from New Line - the production company behind the series - with Freddy star Robert Englund in attendance. "Robert Englund was there in costume, acting like the burlesque Freddy that I felt he had become, and I felt in the dream that in the background was a shadowy figure that was moving parallel to Robert—his own darker shadow, completely apart from that party and it felt very frightening," recalled the director. In trying to puzzle out the subtext of this image, the idea of "Freddy" being a separate entity from his makers and breaking free of the films came to Craven.
He also used the sequel to explore how elemental storytelling is to a culture and exorcising fear, from fairytales to horror movies. New Nightmare - which has no opening titles - was a box-office disappointment upon release but is now considered one of the best of the series. Its meta-element also beat Craven's own Scream by two years, though the latter was the more commercial of the two.
