It's Day 281 of my One Movie a Day for 2023 challenge, and Day 8 for both my 31 Days of Hallowe'en challenge/project as well as the 31 Days of Horror Challenge being hosted by Nightmare On Film Street. Plus, I can not forget the 100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge that I joined back in August.
Every day during this series, I've mentioned that over the course of the past decade I've done a 13 Days of Hallowe'en that ran from the 19th-31st of October, where I would do movie reviews, recipes and comedy skits on my various social media. This year, I'm keeping it more subdued with the movie challenges here and on my Letterboxd.
Today's mini challenge for my own 31 Days of Hallowe'en is Vampires. This is actually the second day of vampire week.
Today's mini theme for the 31 Days of Horror Challenge hosted by Nightmare on Film Street is Meta-Horror. I picked Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Nightmare On Elm Street 7) as it falls into both categories.
The plot follows the main actors from the film series playing hyper-versions of themselves as they are being haunted by Freddy. He has somehow become a tulpa, crossing over from fantasy to reality. Heather, Robert and Wes Craven himself, then find themselves dealing with a version of Freddy that can not be controlled.
I actually had to look up the exact definition of meta-horror, and all I really kept seeing over and over was "horror that is self aware". I saw this movie in cinemas when it was originally released in the early 1990's, and it quickly became one of my favourites in the franchise. It's actually hard to believe it's almost 30 years old at this point, as it feels like it is a current story plot. When you learn about some of the behind the scenes things that happened during production with the real life earthquake, and fan interaction, it really makes you wonder where the reality lines are?
The design of this movie makes it one of the scariest in the franchise, as well as the topic it tackles; which is how some people do get stuck in an idea or project. How that one artistic moment or that one job somehow becomes all they are known to be. How creative identity can be both empowering and draining at the same time.
Now, I mentioned that this movie falls into the vampire category. The entire franchise are vampire movies. The character of Freddy is a soul-sucker. He feeds on fear and at times sexual desire the same way an incubus does. He is a classic folklore definition of what a vampire is. The franchise has him haunting his victims while they sleep, draining their life force and causing them to die one by one until he's devoured the neighbourhood. It's classic vampiric plague. In fact, he's seen as a plague that targets certain members of the community.
Come back tomorrow to see what other tricks and treats I've dug up.
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