One of the Scream Movies Owes a Lot to This Brilliant Nightmare on Elm Street Sequel

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When Wes Craven made A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, his take on the slasher (if the film can even be classified as such) shook up the decade’s array of masked and silent killers with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), an unmasked villain who never shut up. After its success, Craven mostly stepped away from the franchise, but he returned to it just in time in the 90s for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which had a meta take on what Freddy means. Two years later, he saved the slasher genre with another meta movie, Scream, but it’s the third film in the original trilogy, Scream 3, that has the most in common with New Nightmare. Both sequels tell similar stories, albeit with vastly different tones.

‘A New Nightmare’ Followed the Actors Who Played the Iconic Characters

The Nightmare on Elm Street movies followed a rather simple formula, no matter how crazy the sequels got: Freddy Krueger, a man who killed children, was burnt to death by his victims’ families, and now, from beyond the grave, he has supernatural powers and can invade the nightmares of his prey while wearing a bladed glove on one hand. However, as the franchise went on, Freddy lost his fear factor and became a comedian with a huge pop culture presence. If the franchise was to keep going after the failure of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, something different and new needed to be done.

With Wes Craven back in charge, New Nightmare found its way forward through a plot it had never attempted. What if a supernatural demonic entity took the form of Freddy Krueger, but wasn’t exactly Freddy, with the burns on its face being a little different, and the blades on his hand being part of its body rather than a glove? Robert Englund still played the antagonist, but he’s also in the film as a version of himself because, in this world, the Nightmare on Elm Street movies exist, so we get to see Heather Langenkamp, Englund, John Saxon (who played Nancy’s father in the films), and even Wes Craven playing characters with their real life names.

In New Nightmare, the entity is released by the latest A Nightmare on Elm Street coming to an end, and now it’s after Heather Langenkamp and her son, Dylan (Miko Hughes), because killing the actress behind the iconic final girl will free it forever. With the bad comedy put aside, New Nightmare takes a look at how the entity can grow because of the audience’s love and fear of Freddy Krueger and his film franchise, just as the character grew and took on a life of its own in reality.

‘Scream 3’s Ghostface Attacked the Actors in ‘Stab 3’

Like A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Scream franchise follows a simple and repeated formula, with each movie featuring a new person (or two or three) behind the Ghostface mask as they take their love of scary movies and their desire for fame too far. In Scream 3, however, we get the only entry in the series where there is a single Ghostface. At the end, it’s revealed to be Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), a movie buff himself, seeing as he’s the director of the in-production Stab 3, a meta franchise within a franchise of movies based on the events of the Scream movies.

Bridger blames his actions on his mother being Maureen Prescott, who was an actress before she became the mother of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). With his mother rejecting him, he admits that he got Billy and Stu to kill Maureen in the events before the first Scream, and now, having lost his mind and disgusted by Sidney’s fame, he has taken his rage out on the actors in Stab 3 who are playing the characters from the “real life” Woodsboro murders, and his ultimate plan being to frame his long-lost sister, Sidney, for his crimes.

These Two Wes Craven Films Took Different Approaches to Tone

Close up of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) holding his shoulder in Wes Craven's New Nightmare — Close up of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) holding his shoulder in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

In both Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Scream 3, the lines are blurred between reality and fiction, with the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise existing in the former, and the Woodsboro murders from Scream having led to a fictional Stab series in the latter. In both scenarios, the meta plots have our villains using these films to further themselves, whether it be the plan of an entity to kill a famous final girl to free itself, or the insanity of a madman to take out the actors in a movie about the movies we’re watching.

Although both films use a similar plot, they approach it differently in ways that go beyond one antagonist being a demonic entity and another being a psycho with mommy issues. There is also the tone of each film to consider. Wes Craven brilliantly decided that he couldn’t give us just another Freddy Krueger movie, because he had become something to laugh at rather than fear. Instead, the entity takes Freddy’s form, making him look like the character we love, while also being something much more serious, with all the corny humor stripped away.

As for Scream 3, it’s often considered the worst of the franchise, with its twist a letdown, and the comedy laid on too thick. This happened because the original Scream 3 script, which would have shown that Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) was still alive and the leader of a cult of high school killers, had to be scrapped after the Columbine tragedy. This led to a rushed production where Kevin Williamson wasn’t the scriptwriter for the first time. In the end, one film was thoroughly thought out and written by Wes Craven himself, while the other was hurried, yet both came to the same themes because if there’s anything scarier than a horror movie, it’s when the monsters break out of it.

Scream 3 is available to watch on Fubo in the U.S.