The cast and crew of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street get a rude awakening in this 1994 slasher sequel, when Heather Langenkamp (Heather Langenkamp), Robert Englund (Robert Englund) and Wes Craven (Wes Craven) start being terrorised by Freddy Krueger (Freddy Krueger).

To call this the best Elm Street sequel is the biggest understatement since Democrats labelled the Trump-Vance ticket “weird.” After insulting our intelligence for five sequels, the bar was so low that this film could have literally been Freddy Krueger googling his own name for two hours, and it would still have qualified as New Line Cinema’s greatest work since the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

But Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is not just a breath of fresh air for the franchise, but the entire horror genre. Craven returns to rescue the series he created from the cartoon purgatory where it languished for a decade, and to drag it screaming into the real world. Yet it is not the meta premise that renders it real, merely the fact that actions have consequences and characters have lives and institutions exist that makes you believe in Freddy for the first time since 1984.

Freddy himself is audaciously absent for much of the movie, returning the character to his sinister, spectral, child-stalking roots. This is essentially the first sequel in which we have seen the franchise’s true villain, and by that I mean New Line boss Robert Shaye is in it. But the boldest move by Craven is to turn the tacky MTV-derived series into a post-modern psycho-drama. Freddy is his Frankenstein’s monster; he lost control and watched in horror as Krueger became a joke, a toy, the commodification of his creator’s nightmares.

Krueger’s transcendence affects each cast member differently, reflecting the way he sucks the air from the films and their lives. The story even incorporates Langenkamp’s own life as a visual effects coordinator alongside her husband, and her experience of having a stalker. And Craven crafts clever dynamics between characters in a manner that echoes the original film; John Saxon (who played her dad) is Heather’s father figure, Robert Englund (Freddy) more a creepy uncle.

The visionary director would refine these ideas in Scream, and cut out the baggier elements of the story. But where Scream came at just the right moment, New Nightmare was truly ahead of its time. Nowadays every franchise gains self-consciousness and revisits its beginnings, but while that is usually the sign of a series running out of ideas, this is basically the first good idea the Elm Street stable has had since the last time they let Craven be involved (Dream Warriors).

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is a film about why he makes horror movies, and in doing so restores integrity, intelligence and internal logic to a franchise that pissed fire on Freddy Krueger’s remains (I wish that was a metaphor). Thoughtful, thrilling and thoroughly original, it is the perfect send-off for Krueger. Which is presumably why Shaye chose to bring him back in Freddy Vs. Jason.