Woe betide all wayward icons of horror who are drawn to weigh anchor in shady Michael Bay. For this is a place where signature villains are spayed whilst their beloved scripts are suckled clean of innovation before them. A Nightmare on Elm Street was once an endearing and chilling benchmark, one that slid effortlessly into horror lore. It is now here reduced to a hat, a stripy sweater and a rusty old glove.
A Nightmare on Elm Street – Pointless Reinvention (Spoilers Ahead)
When he’s not desecrating his own success with unnecessary sequels Director Michael Bay lends this ungodly talent to other films. This is a task made all the easier via his third share ownership of production house Platinum Dunes. A company whose stated directive is to remake classic horror films, updating them for an entirely new generation – whatever that means.
To date Platinum Dunes has been anything but idle showcasing a string of tepid offerings with seemingly no end in sight:
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
- The Amityville Horror (2005)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
- The Hitcher (2007)
- Friday the 13th (2009)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Re-Mash is but the latest on the list to be smartened up with a choppy title sequence and fresh set of disposable teenagers. The original served its purpose perfectly, arriving briefly in 1994 to drop off a long awaited horror icon and an extremely young Johnny Depp. Looking back it was not so much a classic as it was an original and one of the very first of its kind. At the time it succeeded brilliantly in its ability to scare with in-camera effect shots and innovative set pieces. Today it may seem a little worn worse the wear but it wasn’t a film made for today – that film still hasn’t been crafted.
The decision to remake Elm Street defies most attempts at logic, except of course for the jaded yet very probable notion of cash flow over creativity. Why re-imagine a story that has already been told, and told again and again in the sludge of substandard sequels that flowed from the original? I am no purist and Robert Englund’s film has never really affected me like I know it has others but this sequel is utterly pointless.
Freddy Krueger Lives Again, Barely
Harsh words but sadly true with most if not all of Wes Craven’s ambiguous subtext stripped away here and replaced by massive billboards that proclaim the plot. Here is a pedophile, here are the Polaroid’s to prove it. Nothing is left to fester, nothing remains to nag at the imagination. Good is good, bad is bad – don’t go to sleep or you’ll die. The plot in this new packaging neither thickens nor does it evolve. As said the back story is fleshed out so much that it becomes front story and the film is none the better for it. Pieces of the puzzle that made Freddy Krueger so illusive and yet so universally approachable in the first place are hamfistedly filled in. The resulting creature is reduced to nothing more than a skinny social predator in a funny hat. The fact that this was an evil that couldn’t be stopped or killed wore very thin very fast, even directly following the 1994 original. But this time out stretches of disbelief are the least of the films troubles.
A Nightmare on Elm Street – Acting
The acting here is actually really quite good with Kyle Gallner filling his doomed teenagers shoes with strung out and sleep derived believability. This is a young actor with watchability and depth that promises of better roles to come. Previously he impressed as the cancer patient with ghostly visions in 2009’s The Haunting in Connecticut. Rooney Mara as Nancy Holbrook is another actor that seems destined to ascend. She is next to be seen as Lisbeth Salander, the title character in yet another remake, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Jackie Earle Haley mans up and takes on what must not have been an easy challenge to accept. Here he had to embody a character that is definitively etched into horrors cinemas mindset. Did he succeed? Well, Freddy Krueger has always been somewhat of a straight arrow. He isn’t exactly multifaceted and that is almost the entirety of his charm. He is what he is. A one dimensional unrelenting killer who lives in dreams. Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach from Watchmen) played the part but hobbled by a script that shied away from innovation came away as little more than an imitation of horrors past. A by no means bad performance but a surprisingly hollow one nonetheless. 2/5
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger: ‘Did you know that after the heart stops beating the brain can function for well over seven minutes? We got six more minutes to play’
- Director: Samuel Bayer (Green Day: Bullet in a Bible)
- Starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker
- DVD Release Date: October 5, 2010
- 95 minutes
- United States
Hari Navarro - Hari Navarro is Topic Editor for Suite 101's Horror Film section and Editor/ Writer at online horror review site, The Hell Street ...
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