Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

07/24/2018 07:22

Film: Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

Year: 2010

Director: Daniel Farrands and Andrew Kasch

Writer: Thommy Hutson

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Stacey Alden and Erika Anderson

 

Review:

This documentary goes through the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. The official synopsis is explore the origins of “dream demon” Freddy Krueger in this award-winning documentary that takes you behind the scenes of the most frightening and imaginative horror franchise in motion picture history.

For me, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street terrified me. As I got a little bit older, I learned to just appreciate the film as it is still one of my favorite horror films of all time. This documentary really intrigued me to learn more about that film, the rest of the series as well as the company that made it, New Line Cinema.

That is something I really found interesting for this was that the film starts out talking about New Line Cinema and where they stood. Robert Shay, who was the founder and CEO of company, talks about the humble beginnings of this company and the crew that he had with him. It is interesting how he came to meet Wes Craven and they decided to make the first film together.

We then get back-story for each of the films in the original series, as well as learning about the television show of Freddy’s Nightmares. They bring as much of the casts of these films along with the writers, directors and special effects people from behind the scenes as well. I personally, probably along with horror fans especially those that are fans of the series, found it fun to learn how they did things, why certain things were done and the successes as well as the failures of each film.

To go along with that, each chapter is broken into each film as well as the television show getting its own chapter as well. I thought it was edited together very nicely and they cram a lot into this documentary. I will warn you though, it is 4 hours long as you either need to set a lot of time aside to watch this all the way through, or I actually broke it up into sections.

I do have to say that this is an excellent documentary. I am a little bias, because I found Freddy to be the scariest of the horror icons and I am fan of the series overall. I really enjoyed the interviews and learning more about each film. Despite its running time, I never found myself bored. Each film had its own issues and things that it had to deal with. I know not every film in the series was great, but I do think that this series was innovative and that really comes out from this documentary. If you are into these type of films or a big fan of A Nightmare on Elm Street, I’d definitely give this a viewing. It was quite informative and a fun watch.

 

My Rating: 9 out of 10