Wes Craven was an American director born in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the most influential figures in the history of horror cinema. A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced Freddy Krueger, a dream-invading killer who became one of horror's most iconic villains, and established Craven's recurring interest in the blurred line between nightmare and reality. Scream, released over a decade later, reinvented the slasher film through self-aware, meta-textual humor that simultaneously satirized and revitalized the genre for a new generation, spawning a franchise Craven continued to direct into the 2010s. The Last House on the Left, his earlier and far rawer debut, showed the more transgressive, disturbing register he could bring to the genre's rougher edges. Craven's ability to repeatedly reinvent horror conventions across four decades made him one of the genre's most consistently influential directors. Read more