Several years ago, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a round table interview of sorts where Wes Craven came to a horror class I was taking at the University of Michigan and allowed us students to grill him for about an hour. His knowledge was exceeded only by his kindness and patience, enthusiastically answering every question we threw his way while holding back nothing. It’s an experience that I will never forget.
One year ago today, the esteemed horror writer/producter/director passed away after a battle with brain cancer that next to no one knew of. I remember that night vividly. I tried to go to bed early but my body thought I wanted to take a nap, so it woke me up around 10pm. Frustrated, I grabbed my laptop and began catching up on my socials.
“Anyone say anything of interest on Facebook? Pfft, yeah right. How about Twitter? Let’s scroll through and, wait…what? Wait, fucking what?! No! No no no!!!”
In a year when we’d already lost Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Lee, Geoffrey Lewis, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Daniel von Bargen, and Betsy Palmer, and many more, it felt like that year couldn’t hurt us any more. The damage was already too great. However, the news hit like a flood and suddenly everyone everywhere was reporting that Wes Craven was dead. Just like that, he was gone. And with his passing, a part of the horror community died along with him. I posted about his death with tears in my eyes and then watched as the disbelief and pain spread like ripples on a pond.
Craven’s legacy cannot be denied. He created two major franchises with Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street. He pushed horror to extremes with Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes. He went off the beaten path with films like The People Under the Stairs and The Serpent and the Rainbow. His impact on the horror genre is undeniable and it’s a sad world that we live in where he’s not a part of what’s coming next.
Earlier this month, Trace wrote on Craven’s birthday about the director’s career and last year I wrote to express my mourning and how Craven shaped my horror path. Now here we are a year later. The grief is muted but the memories are still crystal clear and our appreciation for him and his work hasn’t wavered at all. If anything, many of us find ourselves wishing that he was still around to bring his signature flavor to the horror world.
But I think to truly honor Craven, we need to not only remember the past and his works but we also need to recognize and appreciate what we have been given since his passing. Just look at Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe, which creates a tension that is so thick, I doubt even Freddy’s razor fingers could cut through it. Or how about James Wan’s The Conjuring 2, which paid homage to Freddy, and spent as much time making us care about the characters as it did creating highly effective scares. There was also Robert Eggers The Witch which was a brilliant exercise in familial horror and establishing a brooding atmosphere. Dan Trachtenberg’s 10 Cloverfield Lane, which came out of nowhere, and stunned critics and audiences with its paranoia-fueled story.
Wes Craven’s death may have felt like the end of an era but every end ushers in a new beginning. The filmmakers working in the genre now are undeniably influenced by Craven and his spirit lives on far beyond his own works. Horror is in good hands and I know that he’d be smiling and confident about what the future holds for all of us. There are plenty more nightmares to be had.
