A Nightmare on Elm Street
Directed by Samuel Bayer
New Line Cinema, 2010
By Sean Kelly
Note: This review contains minor spoilers.
I ended my review last year of Platinum Dunes’ reboot of Friday the 13th wondering if this reboot would be just as successful in bringing Freddy Krueger to a new audience as it was with Jason Voorhees. I have to say that for the most part the answer is no, since this is a straighforward remake, while last year’s film was an original story that incorporated elements from the first three films.
I was about two years old when Wes Craven’s original Nightmare was released in 1984. By the time I was in elementary school, Freddy (and Jason) were pop culture icons — it really says something when even young children are quite familiar with the main villains of horror films. I still have yet to see the original; however, I am sure there are many people who consider it sacrilegious that Platinum Dunes (co-owned by Michael Bay) was even considering remaking the film.
I will begin by talking about the best element of the film: Jackie Earle Haley’s new interpretation of Freddy Krueger. One consequence of casting Haley is that Freddy now sounds like Rorschach from Watchmen, however that never bothered me. If you were wondering why Freddy was silhouetted in all the promotional materials, it’s because the character now has a more realistic look as a burn victim; rather gruesomely, he is now missing most of the left half of his face. Haley portrays Freddy as more of a straight villain than Robert Englund did (though the film still includes Freddy’s infamous one-liners). The film also features a new expanded back story for Freddy, which includes restoring the previously taboo plot element that he was a pedophile in life (as opposed to the original film just calling him a “child killer”).
If Freddy was the best part of the film, what wasn’t so good? For starters, the plot was a bit formulaic. The film attempts to fool the audience somewhat by introducing a false protagonist in Kris (Katie Cassidy, who is no stranger to horror, having appeared on the TV shows Supernatural and Harper’s Island). We follow Kris for the first act of the film before she is killed off and it moves on to Nancy (Rooney Mara), the real protagonist. However, if you were familiar at all with the original, you would have known from the start that Nancy was the main character and there’d be no real surprise when Kris got sliced up. What’s more, Nancy and the male protagonist Quentin (Kyle Gallner), come off as a bit dull and are hard to root for.
The film is directed by Samuel Bayer, who is best known for directing Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit music video. For some reason, Bayer decided to make the nightmare sequences in the film (especially the ones that take place in the boiler room) look exactly the same as that video, complete with smoke and yellow-orange lighting.
In the end, I consider the new Nightmare to be barely watchable. I think it is probably best to say that the original is in no danger in being replaced by this film, which is worth checking out for Haley’s performance as Freddy and not much else.
