2010’s A Nightmare on
Elm Street, directed by Samuel Bayer.
Starring Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner,
Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Clancy Brown, and Connie Britton.
What is it about?
The teenagers of Springwood, Ohio, are having unsettling
dreams about a dream figure, a horribly burnt man, clad in a fedora and
sporting a glove of razor blades. A group of American youth, Nancy (Rooney Mara),
Kyle (Quentin Smith), Kris (Katie Cassidy), and Jesse (Thomas Dekker), try to
support one another in understanding and combatting what they come to know as
Freddy Krueger. Freddy has a mean streak, and also has an ace up his sleeve- he
comes for you when you are at your most vulnerable, asleep in the dream world.
Nancy’s mom, Gwen (Connie Britton), and Kyle’s father, Alan (Clancy Brown) are
skeptical at first, but come to believe that Freddy is the stuff that
nightmares are made of. Will the group survive Freddy’s efforts to make them
sleep eternally?
Why is it worth seeing?
After a series of diminishing returns for the Nightmare franchise (and no movies since
2003’s underwhelming Freddy vs Jason),
nobody really asked for a reboot of Wes Craven’s 1984 slasher classic. Still,
given the original’s modest beginnings (which I argue are a strength), one
could hope for a glossier and smoother take on the original’s material.
First and foremost, is the villain in the fedora, Christmas sweater, and bladed glove- and of course acidic wit. With Jackie Earle Haley stepping in Robert Englund’s place, after his take on Rorshach in Watchmen, there was a lot of potential in portraying the mocking villain. Haley and the film’s sound effect technicians do a great job of making Freddy’s ominous taunts resonate, a type of nightmare James Maynard Keenan in full out Puscifer mode. But as for his look, there seems to be a direction to make his facial burns more realistic- leading to an outcome of him resembling Grig from The Last Starfighter. It’s regrettable, as a large portion of Freddy’s flashbulb memories in a mind’s eye involves him not looking something akin to a turtle. Rooney Mara, as the iconic teenager Nancy who has to combat a serious boogeyman, is a serious upgrade over three time Nightmare participant Heather Langenkamp, and the main group of teens are mostly relatable.
As for the film’s story, the script veers away from the original’s tale of teens suffering for their parent’s transgressions. Instead, it veers into the territory that the teens themselves were abused by Freddy when they were children. It’s a regrettable choice, that a film that wants to show off its scientific mojo in the form of mild awareness of the effects of sleep deprivation on the mind, pays zero acknowledgement to how each and every one of the characters has so completely repressed their memories- while not noticing that their parents have tried to eliminate all evidence that their spawn used to be children at all. It’s a leap that can’t be bought realistically- and was actually a factoid that Wes Craven skirted when writing the original- depicting Freddy as a child murderer rather than molester, as Craven was trying to avoid being too close to a news cycle covering actual child molestation at the time.
Other than those changes, this is a film that largely runs on auto pilot, climbing the ghastly scaffolding already explored in the original. Even when given a chance to erase the original’s cynical ending, it whiffs. Straight from the generic opening credits, it replicates a movie renowned for its originality, and takes away a key feature of that very film that it’s trying to copy. It wastes an upgraded cast of teens, further cheapens an iconic horror villain, and generally waves its gloved hand at a mythology that is constantly under siege by Hollywood. Maybe Steven Siegel could try the role next?
First and foremost, is the villain in the fedora, Christmas sweater, and bladed glove- and of course acidic wit. With Jackie Earle Haley stepping in Robert Englund’s place, after his take on Rorshach in Watchmen, there was a lot of potential in portraying the mocking villain. Haley and the film’s sound effect technicians do a great job of making Freddy’s ominous taunts resonate, a type of nightmare James Maynard Keenan in full out Puscifer mode. But as for his look, there seems to be a direction to make his facial burns more realistic- leading to an outcome of him resembling Grig from The Last Starfighter. It’s regrettable, as a large portion of Freddy’s flashbulb memories in a mind’s eye involves him not looking something akin to a turtle. Rooney Mara, as the iconic teenager Nancy who has to combat a serious boogeyman, is a serious upgrade over three time Nightmare participant Heather Langenkamp, and the main group of teens are mostly relatable.
As for the film’s story, the script veers away from the original’s tale of teens suffering for their parent’s transgressions. Instead, it veers into the territory that the teens themselves were abused by Freddy when they were children. It’s a regrettable choice, that a film that wants to show off its scientific mojo in the form of mild awareness of the effects of sleep deprivation on the mind, pays zero acknowledgement to how each and every one of the characters has so completely repressed their memories- while not noticing that their parents have tried to eliminate all evidence that their spawn used to be children at all. It’s a leap that can’t be bought realistically- and was actually a factoid that Wes Craven skirted when writing the original- depicting Freddy as a child murderer rather than molester, as Craven was trying to avoid being too close to a news cycle covering actual child molestation at the time.
Other than those changes, this is a film that largely runs on auto pilot, climbing the ghastly scaffolding already explored in the original. Even when given a chance to erase the original’s cynical ending, it whiffs. Straight from the generic opening credits, it replicates a movie renowned for its originality, and takes away a key feature of that very film that it’s trying to copy. It wastes an upgraded cast of teens, further cheapens an iconic horror villain, and generally waves its gloved hand at a mythology that is constantly under siege by Hollywood. Maybe Steven Siegel could try the role next?
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