[Mother of Fears] Meta Mothering in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Welcome to Mother of Fears – a monthly column that will explore the various roles that mothers play within the horror genre. Mothers are a staple feature in horror movies, and yet, their stories, motivations, representations, and relationships with their children are so varied and complex that we never feel like we’re watching the same story twice. Every month I will take a look at a different mother from the world of horror, explore their story, and look at how they fit into the broader representation of women in horror.

After Nancy Thompson was killed in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and Freddy was apparently killed off for good in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), it seemed like we were never going to see our favourite serial killer and final girl combo on the big screen again. But that’s where Wes Craven swooped back in to save the series, introduce mainstream audiences to the wonders of meta horror, and setting the stage for his 1996 slasher classic, Scream. 

 Instead of heading back to Springwood, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is set in a fictionalised version of the real world, with Heather Langenkamp, Robert England, Wes Craven, and John Saxon playing versions of themselves. Heather’s husband, Chase, works in special effects and has been secretly working with Wes on an upcoming Elm Street movie. However, Wes’ inspiration for the movie seems to be coming from nightmares he’s been having about an entity which is using Freddy’s image to be brought to life and escape into the real world. Heather is invited to work on the film, but she declines, saying she’s trying to leave her horror life behind her now. 

 However, Heather has started having nightmares herself, as she dreams about her and Chase being attacked by a runaway Freddy claw on the set of a movie. While Heather is intent on forgetting about Freddy as much as possible, he seems to be pushing his way into her life from all angles. As well as the threatening phone calls she’s started getting, presumably from an obsessed fan, Heather’s son, Dylan, is caught watching A Nightmare on Elm Street one night. He also starts mentioning Freddy more and more, despite Heather’s attempts to shield him from the horror character as much as possible. In fact, Heather isn’t keen on Dylan having any exposure to anything scary, refusing to finish reading Hansel and Gretel to him at bedtime because she believes it’s too violent.

Dylan seems in an almost catatonic state after viewing Freddy on the TV, reciting the famous skipping rope song from the film series, and even screaming in his mother’s face when she tries to wake him up. Dylan’s behaviour and the increased phone call activity causes Heather to call Chase back from a work trip to help her cope. However, Chase falls asleep behind the wheel and is slashed by Freddy’s claw appearing through the seat. 

Even though everyone else is quick to write off Chase’s death as a simple car accident, Heather begins to suspect something darker is at work, especially when she sees the giant claw marks on her dead husband’s chest. It’s at this point that Heather has to deal with the same looks and judgements that her character Nancy did in A Nightmare on Elm Street as she desperately tries to convince those around her that Freddy is real. 

After Chase’s death, Dylan retreats further into himself and starts putting himself in dangerous situations, such as climbing to the top of a jungle gym in a bid to reach his father in heaven. He also insists on sleeping with his toy dinosaur, Rex, at the bottom of the bed to keep Freddy away, even if poor Rex does end up with more than a few slashes as a reminder of the battle. Teamed with Heather’s lack of sleep, her own grief, and the increasing intensity of her nightmares, she decides she needs to take Dylan to the hospital to see if they can help with his condition. 

This scene mirrors the scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street when Marge takes Nancy for a sleep study, and witnesses her daughter’s nightmare first-hand, as she pulls Freddy’s hat back into the real world. This scene in the original movie seemed to make Marge double down on her beliefs that she could help Nancy by herself, leading her to bar the windows and basically locking Nancy inside the house to keep her safe. Heather also wants to do things her own way, believing that she alone can protect her son from Freddy. However, because she believes so strongly in Freddy, her pleas seem strange and unbelievable compared to that of Marge. 

Both mothers were doing the best they could to help their children, and both recognised the need for medical attention to try and find the answers. However, Marge was rooted in logic. Even though she knew about Freddy, she refused to believe he had returned from the dead, and therefore, really believed he didn’t pose any threat to Nancy. Heather knows Freddy is real, and she has seen the damage he can do as he’s already killed Chase. She wants to seek help from medical professionals, but her worries about sedating Dylan, as well as her own erratic behaviour caused by her lack of sleep causes the medical staff to be wary of her. 

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Dylan mentions Freddy to one of the doctors, who immediately accuses Heather of showing the movies to her son, despite how hard she’s tried to shield Dylan from that world. The fact that Heather also has a wound on her arm from an earthquake which no one else seemed to experience leads the doctors to worry about her mental state. Marge was clearly struggling to cope with the Freddy situation as well, but she chose to remain calm in public, only letting her mask slip once she was in the comfort of her own home. For Heather, that isn’t a choice because she’s constantly on edge about when Freddy will next strike.

Dylan’s babysitter, Julie, turns up at the hospital as well, after getting a bad feeling about him. While Julie doesn’t know the whole situation about Freddy, she knows that Heather is a good mother and that anything she is doing is for Dylan’s welfare. Julie showing up at the hospital offers a lifeline to Heather because she finally has someone to support her and help stick up for Dylan’s best interests. 

However, all the doctors see is a clearly sleep-deprived child, and they believe Heather is preventing her son from sleeping due to her own mental problems. While the doctors take Heather off to discuss the problem privately, two nurses ignore Julie’s specific request not to sedate Dylan, leading to Julie attacking them. Unfortunately for Julie, this sedation is enough to bring Freddy out into the real world, where he brutally murders her in a scene mirroring Tina’s death in the 1984 movie. 

While the doctors still aren’t sure what’s going on, Julie’s death in a seemingly empty room causes them to realise that something else may be at play. Also, the fact that Dylan escapes the hospital unnoticed gives Heather some vindication that the hospital staff aren’t as perfect as they like to pretend to be. 

Even though Dylan is half asleep and terrified, the only thing he remembers is his mother’s advice about their home being right across the freeway from the hospital. However, Dylan chooses to take the direct route across the road, and when Freddy gets involved in proceedings, it means Heather has to throw herself into oncoming traffic to try and save him. Heather never thinks twice about putting herself in harm’s way for the sake of Dylan, because she knows that no one else fully understands their situation, and therefore, she is their best chance of survival. 

Back at their house, Freddy’s presence has changed the real world into something resembling A Nightmare on Elm Street, with John Saxon now acting like Nancy’s father, and Heather realising she’ll have to fully embrace the role of Nancy one last time if she wants to save her son. Heather has been trying to escape the world of horror and the legacy of Nancy for quite some time now, but Freddy needs her to become Nancy so he can kill his final girl and one true enemy and finally enter the real world. However, Freddy doesn’t realise the true power that Nancy’s character holds. Combining the kickass abilities of Nancy with Heather’s desire to protect her son creates a final girl that Freddy should be terrified of, but he clearly underestimates her. 

Heather changes into Nancy’s clothes and follows a trail of sleeping pills through the portal at the bottom of the bed into Freddy’s world. While this is the lair of the monster and not Freddy himself, it’s very reminiscent of Freddy’s boiler room in the original movies, filled with dark metal and flames. Freddy is trying to pull Heather into her darkest fear, not only with memories of filming the first movie but also because she has to deal with the fact Dylan has also been plunged into this nightmare. 

In this world, Heather has to relive her fight as Nancy, including running up the gloopy steps she faced in A Nightmare on Elm Street in a bid to save her son from being eaten by Freddy. Nancy’s parents were very passive when it came to protecting her in the first movie. While they claimed to have her best interests at heart, they were never really listening to her. Heather believes Dylan about Freddy right from the start and is willing to jump into a nightmarish landscape brought to life to ensure he survives. 

In the end, Dylan and Heather work together better than Nancy ever did with either of her parents to defeat Freddy. Much like Gretel pushing the witch into the oven, mother and son trap Freddy in a furnace and watch him burn to death. 

Even though Marge and Donald were the fictional parents of Nancy, Heather shows that you don’t have to repeat the generational mistakes of those before you. Unlike so many horror movie mothers, she immediately takes the side of her son, even though it seems completely unbelievable. Even if there’s a small chance that Freddy is real and after her family, Heather has seen a fictionalised version of how dangerous that could be, and she does her best to put a stop to it.

Just as Wes commends her at the end of the movie, Heather deserves all the praise for stepping into Nancy’s shoes one last time to get rid of this version of Freddy. Even knowing the types of terrors she’s about to face, she knows she can’t leave her son to face this alone. Despite trying  to keep him away from anything scary altogether, his ability to help defeat Freddy in the scariest of circumstances shows that Dylan is strong and brave, and maybe Heather needs to stop trying to protect him all the time. And so, they sit down together to read Wes’ script of their shared experience where they fought their nightmares head-on and defeated the monster as a team.

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