On Monday the world lost a cinematic icon.
Wes Craven, best known as the creator of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream franchises, died aged 76 after a battle with brain cancer, and since then tributes have been pouring in from both fans and colleagues from around the world, all sharing their memories and admiration for the beloved director.
It’s difficult to imagine what the horror genre would be without Craven. His first two films, The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, shocked both Hollywood and audiences with their extreme graphicness and disturbing imagery, but it wasn’t until A Nightmare on Elm Street came along that he truly cemented himself as a master of all things terrifying. The character of Freddy Krueger, a deformed psychopath who haunts the dreams of children and in turn is also able to kill them in reality, is to this day one of the most memorable characters in cinematic history, and the film itself was so successful that it’s since spawned seven sequels, a television series and (of course) a remake.
A decade later and the Scream franchise showed not only his love for the genre he’d spent most of his career on, but also his savviness for it: clever, shocking and even funny, Scream both deconstructed and played to its tropes and cliches and went on to become yet another iconic entry in the slasher genre, as well as featuring another villain so memorable that even children have since donned the costume for Halloween.
Craven’s films (which later included 2005’s Red Eye and even a segment in the anthology film Paris, je t’aime) inspired a generation of filmmakers, and are as accessible as they are scary; perhaps that’s why this loss feels particularly sore. No one did it quite like him, and for that reason his contributions to both horror and cinema itself will live on for a long, long time.
Wes Craven, we’ll miss you.
Words by Samantha King