While there's really no reason to remake Wes Craven's cult original, I wondered what 20 years and a pile of mediocre sequels would breathe into the franchise and, of course, who would play Freddy. Following in the footsteps of Robert Englund is no small feat but Jackie Earle Haley (of Watchmen fame) was a great casting decision, and carries out the sadomasochistic teen-slashing quite convincingly. He does this despite the script so kudos for making something out of nothing.
Unfortunately, the soon-to-be-slashed teens are somewhat less interesting, and mope between the compulsory "research the plot on the Internet" scenes and high-school melodrama. The parents of the talk-back teens seem to take any amount of crap from these kids and their only purpose in the movie is to hide "the big secret" that for some reason was so prominent in the movie's trailer.
Although it's been a while and maybe Craven's version wasn't exactly full of rich, three-dimensional characters, the shallowness is painfully obvious with the limp dialog and genuinely appalling acting. But the biggest difference between the original and the remake is that the newer version has completely lost any sense of terror, and it's really hard to figure out why. Partly it's that the obligatory CGI upgrade has the effect of making Freddy less scary, and partly it's because we're just not emotionally invested in the actors.
Yes, it's still better than most of the pretty-awful Nightmare sequels, or the Freddy versus Jason versus Robocop versus Thundercats nonsense. And I know there are some die-hard fans out there who really like this "re-imagining", but you have to ask yourself when franchise reboots come along, what would Christopher Nolan do? Using the Nolan benchmark, I can only conclude this was a missed opportunity. And it just occurred to me that the knife-glove thing would be a real pain for habitual nose-pickers.
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woopak_the_thrillOctober 18, 2010
I was pretty bored of this movie too. A very lackluster film. Thanks for the review!
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Nightmare on Elm Street is a reboot of the popular Freddy Krueger franchise from the eighties and nineties. Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen) will take on the razor glove as the new Freddy. It is scheduled for release on April 30th 2010.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 2010 American slasher film directed by Samuel Bayer, ...
