Director: Wes Craven*
Cast: John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund
Have I Seen it Before: Oh yes. This was the last movie I joined Beyond the Cabin in the Woods before they asked me to join the show permanently. It seems like a couple of lifetimes ago. That’s probably because it sort of was…
Did I Like It: In the past I’ve always been sort of ambivalent about this movie. It’s never felt as relentlessly terrifying as Halloween (1978), or as trashy as Friday the 13th (1980), or as insidious unnerving as Hellraiser (1987). Where does it really fit in to the horror pantheon, especially when I would point to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) as the best edition in the franchise.
This time, however I found more to like about it than I had ever before. I must becoming soft in my increasing age. The surreal, almost cubist images in character’s dreams always feel like a more realistic depiction of the ephemeral nature of dreams, far more than what most might find in cinema.
That manages to paper over some of the flaws I still can’t quite get over. The teenagers are relatively well cast, but a bit too earnest for their own good. I also can’t help but laugh a little bit when adolescents in movies are having astonishingly good sex, when anyone over the age of 25 is pretty certain that no adolescent has ever had any good sex since time began.
Ultimately, though, when the characters start talking about the nature of dreams, the film becomes less of a cinematic experience and more a videotaped podcast on the subject of dreams. To be fair, Craven has that problem in his films. New Nightmare had the same problem occasionally, although those instances felt more natural in light of that film’s more mythological undertones.
* I may have said this before, but it bears mentioning again. The man had the best name of a horror director ever. It was like if James Whale had been nicknamed John Spookyfuntime, or if John Carpenter had been name John Relentless-Suspense-And-Never-Being-Bogged-Down-By-Excessive-Backstory.