Nightmare

Let me start off by saying i thought this movie was decent. But I expected a lot more.

We all know the story of Freddy Krueger. How he got burnt etc. In this one it's the same, but it's the change of Freddy's character that really lost my interest. Jackie Earle Haley is about as best as you can get at playing Freddy Krueger. No one will ever beat Robert Englund. He's just Freddy Krueger! I don't really need to explain the plot, you all know the plot, BUT, let me explain the changes. In the old Nightmare On Elm Street, Freddy Krueger would always mess with people before he killed them. In this one he just kills them and doesn't mess around. Nothing humorous to say, nothing, just kills them. In the original he was a psychopathic killer who hurts children. In this one he's just a pedophile. Loves to screw all the women and girls. To me, that put me off. All this put me off. So Freddy's character changed a lot, but did it work? Not for me. Didn't work for me.

All the acting was decent and there's some gory scenes, all in all, not the remake I was expecting and had hoped for. Everything about it is decent, but nothing great. 5/10

People are so whiney I swear.

If this was the original nightmare it would be rated far higher. People are just mad cause it's a "remake". I thought it was a very good adaption. Freddy was menacing. The acting, story and effects were also very good.

We all need to learn that nothing is truly sacred in Hollywood, so we might as well just embrace these remakes and hope that, every now and then, one of them will turn out ok and be able to hold itself up to the original on its own terms. A Nightmare on Elm Street comes incredibly close to standing out from the original film, but for every leap forward, it takes a few steps backwards until it's straddling the line between the two and not really committing fully to anything original.

The story is, more or less, the same with a group of teenagers experiencing horrific nightmares involving a burnt man with a glove of knives who is slicing and dicing them. In both films, it's revealed that this man was someone their parents murdered in a fit of vigilante justice after he'd been let free for molesting their children. The new film adds a twist questioning if Freddy was actually guilty or innocent.

The new Nightmare has a much bigger budget than the original film, so it's odd that the effects work isn't nearly as impressive as the original film. A bit of Freddy's makeup seems computer generated and a few of the other effects resemble a cheap 90's video game. The cast is fairly strong with Katie Cassidy, Kyle Gallner, and Thomas Dekker standing out as three of the terrified teens. Rooney Mara is the weak link among the them as Nancy. She's made the choice to play the character as moody and depressive, which makes her hard to root for and dull to watch.

As Freddy, Jackie Earle Haley can only do so much to step out from the shadow of Robert Englund, but he does a good job and brings a different, more pervy energy to the character which adds a little threat that his silly makeup job keeps threatening to take away.

With remakes being inevitable, I'd prefer that they be based on flawed originals. The new Clash of the Titans, in concept tried to do this. This is my stance on remakes. The trouble is that Hollywood green lights remakes of popular, good, movies because of their justifiable built-in fan bases. The 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street was a refreshing, novel, approach to the slasher subgenre film. I can understand why Platinum Dunes would have was well-known music video director Samuel Bayer helm its remake.

A Nightmare on Elm Street focuses on a group of teens that share haunting nightmares. When they go to sleep, they have demented dreams of a maniacal burn victim named Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley). Freddy chases the kids through his world and if he can get his knife-tipped glove on them, they die in the real world. The remaining teenagers are then tasked with insomnia as they search for the reason why Freddy wants them dead.

I'll start with the positives. From an acting and casting standpoint Jackie Earle Haley is the guy you want in this role. He has a haunting voice that he modulates with perfection, coming up with his own unique take on the notorious Mr. Krueger. When combining his talents with the usual high production values (for horror films) provided by Platinum Dunes, you get a workable formula. Unlike the other films, but like Platinum Dune's other remakes, there is an attempt at a Freddy Krueger origin story. It just so happens I like the way this part of the movie is told and having the cursed teens see it in their dreams is interesting.

With these elements working in the film's favor, there are many conflicts elsewhere. Notable among these are redundant dream sequences. The settings sometimes change but they almost all play the same way: teenagers walk through eerie environments followed by a Freddy attack. For a screenwriter to be so lacking in imagination is mind-boggling. Freddy's costume is easily recognizable, but the new burn victim look of his face is unappealing. Chances are a real life Freddy would look more like this than he did in the '80s, but The English Patient is not a frightening countenance.

What mars the first half of the film is an insistence on not developing characters. We assume these are high school kids, who mysteriously are devoid of personalities, and then they die. I understand the concept of an ensemble cast, but when main players take such a backseat that when they finally move to the front of the minivan we don't know them.

Despite a rocky start things do turn around, but our unfortunately thickheaded protagonists are slow to put things together. They should be going on about a week of sleep deprivation, but the new Nancy (Rooney Mara) seems only mildly annoyed. When Heather Langenkamp played Nancy, she was just as active but with more lines we had a better understanding of her frustration.

The biggest problem of all is that the 2010 A Nightmare on Elm Street is not scary. Scare tactics all center on sound effects and it gets old fast. Every time Freddy appears there is a scream of some kind that pierces the ears of the audience. No one is jumping at fright; maybe some will jump at the surprise. This is silly, outdated, and uncreative.

After Remake on Elm Street, Platinum Dunes is seemingly out of horror franchise fodder. Almost all of their remakes have been critically lambasted, but most of them managed to be profitable. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that they plan to shell out as many sequels as the original franchises generated, but I'd prefer that action since it would keep them busy and off of more esteemed films.

I had a feeling this was going to be slated, and some of the criticism is justified, but in all honesty I liked it. The opening scenes are fantastic, it's a very smart looking film, it looks great. The content of the film is decent, it's such a shame that Robert Englund didn't do the film, but I can imagine he feels it's a role that's well and truly in the past. That fact was a nail in the coffin for the film, I'm not sure what many were expecting.

Some of the scares are a little on the tame side by today's standards, but the story is good, it deserved a bit more loving that it got. 7/10.