31 DAYS OF DREW 2 - DAY 7: WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE

Every horrorhound's favorite month is upon us, and to celebrate, I'll be dishing out film recommendations for every day in October. I hope you enjoy the month with some good movies, even if they aren't ones I recommend!

Today's Pick: Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

Before he eviscerated the slasher genre two years later, Wes Craven turned his critical and scholarly eye towards the monster he himself had created: Freddy Krueger. Not content with New Line Cinema's less-than-satisfactory exit for the character in 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (the series had drifted further and further into the realm of comedy by then), Craven took a bold approach by setting the film in our own reality, with the actors and creators behind Freddy playing themselves. It's a crafty way to subvert audience expectations, create a thoughtful commentary on horror films and the genre's importance to our cultural psyche, and to make Freddy Krueger an entity that deserves to be feared once again.