Wes Craven's New Nightmare

by David Bergantino

Freddy Krueger returns, scarier than ever, in an all-new movie written and directed by Wes Craven, creator of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Wes Craven thought he was through with Freddy Krueger, until the cast and crew of the original film find themselves stalked by the deadly supernatural force. Movie to be released in time for Halloween.

Genres: Horror, Media Tie In

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1994

Reviews

[Christopher M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow - did this book manage to suck not only the money from my wallet and time from my lifespan, but it damn near killed my will to live as well.

I am an Elm Street fan from the early days and have always enjoyed collecting the books that either tied in with the movie (such as "Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams", an anthology edited by Martin H. Greenberg) or novelizations of the film, but this book was, in my opinion, a bastardization of literature from page one.

For one thing, I paid to read the movie, not "the movie guest starring David Berantino", David being the author who pretty much defecated into a book binding and then slapped this ISBN on it. His tactic of writing himself into the storyline cheapened the movie for me on the whole and made me want to take a straight razor to the pages on which his journal entries resided so that I would have a halfway decent ROI on my purchase.

But even the novelization itself was horrific. I know the em dash (erroneously known as the hyphen). I like the em dash. David, however, loves the em dash so much that I was hard pressed to find a single page in this book where David was not making hot, sweaty monkey-love to his favorite punctuation mark at least once. I hoped that my brain would be so numbed to the dash that I would not notice it after passing the midway point, but it was no good...the damned thing just kept jumping out at me, screaming "Here I am, Chris! Yet - another - damned - dramatic - pause!".

finally, and I know that this may be more of a fan nitpick than anything, but when I opened the book and saw the sample text on the front page and saw the hand/blades/'glove' (technically not a glove since it was a biomechanical hand with blades in the flesh) referred to as the Claw with a capitalized C, I could not help but facepalm. "Freddy's claw", I could handle. "the claw" lowercased, I could handle. But to give Claw a proper name with the capital C? That, like the em dash, to me, was a hacks' way of slapping the reader in the face and saying "This is important! Pay attention!!" when the lowercase variant would have worked much better, in my opinion as it is a possessed object...not a person.

All in all, if you want to read the movie, you would be much better off just turning on the subtitles on the DVD.

[Jonathan Rosas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was pretty good over all. It seems I'm the only one who didn't like the added "journal" entries the author put in there. To me it was just taking things a little to far. The point of the movie and book is to make it seem real, and though he was trying to do that with his journal entries, it just wasn't doing it for me. He could of made the journal into it's own book. I loved that as I was reading the book I was pretty much reciting the movie in my head as well. A lot of the things I remember from the movie but reading them made them make more sense. I love reading a paragraph in the book that goes into so much detail about what's going on, and the same thing happens in the movie but with the book you can see it, and re-read it and fully understand it. I don't want to rewind a part of a movie over and over again just to understand a scene. At times the writing seemed a bit childish, as in written by as a child's point of view, but those were very rare. Over all I really enjoyed the book, and really want to watch the movie now.

[Gerd · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did feel that the novel works at times marginally better than the movie - but it's still a far cry from being good or at least decent.

The writing feels often forced and makes for a slow read so that even at just over 200 pages (and with a minor crush on Heather Langenkamp) it still took me quite some time to get through it.

[Rick Mullenax · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel was interesting, but the true gem was the creative addition the Writer put into the novel. The Writer added a journal between chapters and just like the stars of the movie, he was also being haunted by the iconic Freddy. Not too many writers of adopted work put that kind of energy into their work. This Writer thought outside the box.

[Quentin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in a short amount of time.

I know that's kinda strange to start a review like that, but it was something I wanted to say that represented how much I enjoyed this novelization. David Bergantino, while I only own this one book, you did a pretty good job with writing Wes Craven's New Nightmare!

As with all other novelizations, you know the gist of the story. During the process of making the next Nightmare on Elm Street, Heather Langenkamp (AKA Nancy) and the other people involved are "attacked" by the Springwood Slasher himself. Or are they?

If you've seen the movie (or know the plot as well as any superfan out there), you know what happens and who Freddy really is. And that's where my slightly major problem comes in.

This novelization is close to the movie. A little too close. While it has been a long time since I've seen New Nightmare, there is nothing new. No surprise scenes from earlier drafts, no scrapped characters (except that Johnny Depp is in the funeral scene, unlike the movie). No new scares.

This book might have been a five-star read had it slightly deviated more from the film, and the book falters off course a bit because of that fact.

However, there's a fix for that.

David Bergantino has written himself into the book. Literally. Throughout, there are journal entries from his perspective, explaining how he's writing this novelization (he calls it this, rather than saying "the book of the movie" or "the novel"). There are also newspaper clippings and letters as well, adding to the whole meta factor of the film. This probably would be a grievance to some (and me, though it's more in the fact it kind of slows the story down. Otherwise, it's all good), but I digress.

David also intrigues the reader, giving thoughts to every character (even Freddy for a brief moment). You understand what Heather thinks of when dealing with her son Dylan. You feel a bit of emotion to some of the others. Like the more well-written novelizations, this makes the story a little more easier to comprehend in terms of character perspectives.

A few other nitpicks of mine are minor. The writing gets a bit too forced or childish, as if this were a junior novel (you know what I mean with how many times the explanation point is used, even if in this book it's not as littered with them). Two of the most well-remembered lines in the film from Freddy are cut out (you also know them if you've seen it). The story ends rather quick and feels as though David rushed through the last scene altogether on a deadline. Freddy's glove is called the Claw (not kidding, this is how it is written in the book) for some reason.

Other than that, David Bergantino's novelization of Wes Craven's New Nightmare is as solid a read as the last novelization I read (read my review of said novelization here), and is probably number 1 in terms of creativity.

To close out this review, here's a pretty neat unrelated quote from the book about physics and time that stuck out for some reason:

Theoretically, there is only one point at which time may be perceived to stop. That is called death. (p 145)

[~Cyanide Latte~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

For what it's worth, this wasn't bad. Wes Craven's New Nightmare is far from my favorite installment in this movie series, and I was on the fence about actually going through this one. But for what it's worth, I still appreciate this and I enjoyed David Bergantino's writing. I also owe another thanks as usual to the 80s Slasher Librarian on YouTube for recording a fanmade audiobook version of this book and posting it for me to read. Please check out his channel if you haven't yet; he posts all of these for free to everyone to enjoy, and since these older slasher books are all out-of-print and are difficult to get ahold of, this is also important archival work he's doing here. Check out his uploads sometime.

[Tim Vargulish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Follows the movie pretty closely (which is not a perfect horror movie but one of my absolute favorites). What sets this apart though and makes it a lot more interesting than other adaptations is the added meta narrative of following the author as he's adapting it potentially having troublesome encounters of his own. The movie's already a fascinating look at what happens when fiction and reality blend together and the book adds a nice little touch to it. Big recommend for other Fred-Heads out there.

[Mikepottz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freddy is going to haunt, torment, scare and kill people as a new script is being written by Wes. Great to see Nancy back as herself in the real world being spooked to death and trying to defeat Freddy who wants to kill her son and who is slowly losing her insanity. The author adding himself in the novel was a bit much. You are no King and this is no dark tower. Do like the concept and any Freddy is good Freddy day.

[Rose 'I Have Too Many Books To Read And No More Room' Barrientos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was pretty good...mostly what was in the movie, but I did enjoy the new stuff added.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Johnathan Mitchell]

The paperback book Wes Craven's New Nightmare was a good book, I haven't read it in awhile but from what i remember of the book it was thrill-pacing, scary and terrifying. I did not want to put down the book. I hope to read more of similar horror novels to always get a good scare in [ aswell as it it keeps in line with the movie and wasn't that bad in plot.