Wes Craven
5 titles · american genre
Teenagers on Elm Street work out that whatever is killing them can only reach them while they sleep, which gives A Nightmare on Elm Street a monster you cannot outrun by staying awake for long. Craven kept finding rules like that and then breaking them in public. Scream opens by killing its biggest star in the first ten minutes and has the survivors discuss the conventions of the film they are in. The early work is rougher: The Last House on the Left is a grindhouse revenge picture that made its money back many times over.
Signature
- A horror premise built on one clean rule, then a film that tests it.
- Dream logic and the boundary between sleeping and waking.
- Self-aware characters who have seen the same films the audience has.
- Suburbia as the site, parents as the ones who will not listen.
fit
Lineage
Earlier films these works draw on, and the films they went on to shape — each link checked to name a film that actually came first.