Last night, Wes Craven's family announced that the acclaimed horror writer and director passed away at the age of 76. I'm a big Wes Craven fan. Even at his worst (Cursed, naturally), I found his ideas very interesting. He also never phoned in a direction job, even when the film wound up being pretty bad.
Craven is best known for the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. He created one of the most iconic villains in all of horror with Freddy Kreuger and allowed for a wide variety of horror styles to evolve naturally from the grim, dry, and bloody slasher that started it all. My favorite entry is 3: The Dream Warriors. It fully embraced the insanity of our dreams and dipped the series into the religious horror spectrum with an origin story no one saw coming.
The films also spawned one of the more interesting anthology horror TV series, Freddy's Nightmares. Freddy Kreuger played Crypt Keeper in a series of horror stories set in and around the original town. Unlike the Crypt Keeper, Freddy usually stepped in as the villain in these horror shorts and always triumphed. Always. There's no spoiler there. Freddy is coming for you and you will go down.
Craven also created one of my favorite horror films, the highly polarizing The People Under the Stairs. It is arguably his most ambitious film, tackling issues of racism, poverty, and child abuse in a horror/comedy format. It's a must-see.
Wes Craven reshaped the horror landscape in 1996 by directing Kevin Williamson's ironic meta slasher Scream. The self-referential teenage nightmare saw horror fans confronted with (or inspired by) the 80s slasher craze that Wes Craven helped create. The film spawned three vastly different sequels (my favorite being Scream 4, aka the one about Internet celebrity culture) tackling different trends in teen culture and horror. There's even a TV series now on MTV that is surprisingly good.
Craven also dipped into non-horror on occasion, directing the Academy Award nominated musical drama Music of the Heart and contributing to the incredible French anthology film Paris, je t'amie. Essentially, Craven is one of the rare horror directors who actually received a lot of respect from the film industry despite almost exclusively working on genre films.
Wes Craven reshaped the world of horror. He will be missed.
