Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Wes Craven's New Nightmare plays at the Historic Duncan Auditorium on Friday, October 30, as part of the Tampa Theatre's 2026 A Nightmare on Franklin Street series presented by Bank of America. It's a late-night screening, starting at 10 PM, with doors opening at 9:30 PM.

Released in 1994, New Nightmare is a meta-horror that pushes the Freddy Krueger saga to its logical conclusion. Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street films, stars as herself. In the movie, her family begins to have nightmares in which Freddy appears, and the violence of those dreams follows them into waking life. It's a film that breaks the fourth wall and pierces the audience's last line of defense: the idea that it's only a movie.

Critics have called it intelligent, befuddling, upsetting, and vicious, drawing a comparison to the original series that makes New Nightmare to A Nightmare on Elm Street what Halloween was to its predecessor, only more so. It runs 112 minutes and is rated R. The cast includes Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Miko Hughes, Wes Craven himself, David Newsom, Tracy Middendorf, Fran Bennett, and John Saxon, all under the direction of Wes Craven.

Tickets are $13 for evening general admission and $10 for Tampa Theatre members, with a $2 service fee for online purchases. Doors open at 9:30 PM for the 10 PM start.