Look, here’s the thing in a nutshell: if you’re going to do a remake, reimagining, reboot, or whatever you’d like to call it, you better come to the table ready to ante up big and play it for all it’s worth. Otherwise, why bother?
Freddy Krueger may be properly dressed in his signature striped sweater, brown Fedora, and nasty blade glove, but he has nowhere to go in this unimaginative reimagining of Wes Craven’s original nightmare. Under a deathmask’s worth of immobilizing rubber makeup (although I admit it appears more medically correct), Jackie Earle Haley’s perpetually pouting face made me pine for Robert Englund’s glistening bald pate, leering, spongy flesh-burned face, and his manic, gleefully malicious dream-devil-in-the-boiler-room enthusiasm.
The outrageous, lethally-twisted dream intrusions that are the hallmark of this franchise are put to bed in Samuel Bayer’s cardboard standee version of Freddy, where winking consciousness between Elm Street’s dreamland and wakefulness is less important than an almost back to back line-up of dead-teenager-walking kill-fests, escalating the body count while decreasing emotional involvement from us for those being stalked. This is a painting by numbers, pretty to look at (it’s well photographed by Jeff Cutter), but rote in its execution of mayhem: there is no sizzle when we should feel the burn as much as child-molester Fred Krueger did.
Ironically, the interpersonal perquisites of cell phone, too many close-ups of Google-like search engine queries, and a victim’s anguished YouTube-delivered solilocam cry for help, distance Freddy’s victims from each other—and from us—by substituting the more intimate sleep-over vigil shown in the original film, when Tina, Nancy, and Glen fret over their shared nightmares, with a modern digital one that trades the popcorn closeness for laptops and no-doze medications. While Freddy’s potential victims share a forgotten connection from having attended the same preschool, their relationships are made weaker because of this digitized distancing, rendering them less supportive of each other and easier prey for their tormentor. Which is good for Freddy because, being less creative in his attacks in this remake, he doesn’t do much beyond making sparks when he scrapes his blades against the pipes.
Again and again and again.
At least Nancy remains his favorite little girl. But this Nancy (Rooney Mara) is not 1984’s Nancy (played by the feisty Heather Langenkamp). Here she puts up a less-spirited fight against Freddy and spends more time searching the Internet for information and sketching her nightmares instead of trying to save her friends. Where Craven drove his story through the battle of wills between Nancy and Freddy, escalating the stakes through an ambitious series of special effects to add urgency and nightmarish uncertainty, writers Strick and Heisserer use the slow revelation of Freddy’s nastiness with children as their primary driver, eschewing the giddily insane, booby-trapped confrontation between Nancy and Freddy for repetitive, almost static, boiler room scenes of Freddy looking ominous and victims looking scared. Fans can debate the merits or demerits of this changed dynamic, but this remake’s less dreamland, more rational approach keeps the story as rigid as Haley’s burn makeup.
As a fan of horror movies, and yes, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, I can tell you this movie is a disappointment because it takes from the original storyline but doesn’t seem to understand it. Freddy is here, his victims are here, lots more technology use—and no weird-looking hairdos—are here, but the nightmarish invasion of one’s dreams is missing; the menace that sparked the first entry in this franchise is missing; 1984’s spirit behind the envelope-pushing special effects is missing.
This is one boring movie when it should have sizzled.
Now, if they had Johnny Depp play Freddy instead…?
Its interesting that you brought up technology being a problem for the story. I guess that it says something about technology distancing us away from each other… even though that wasn’t the intent.
It lacked heart and was completely lifeless. Crude characterizations (a Joy Division t-shirt makes you social awkward), lack of attention to suspense and buildup and one too many employs of a jump scare is what killed this for me. I’m going to chalk up Jackie’s performance up to not having a whole lot to work with.
Given more dynamic to work with, Haley could have done a great job. Some critics mentioned his short stature being a detriment, but I felt it worked more for him. Evil can come in all sizes, and there’s been a trend to make it huge in size, but not threat.
I think the use of cell phones, PCs, Internet, etc, present a challenge to convey interpersonal drama, especially in horror movies. After too many commercially-driven searches on Gigablast for answers, I questioned why they didn’t communicate with each other more directly or work together more. That vidcam from one victim did nothing to build tension or urgency, yet J-horror has utilized such things with more verve. My complaint is that the technology was pissed away on trifles when the special effects should have utilized it more to create the Freddy dreamscape. The movie suffers from a lack of mood and tone that the series strived to foster.
I agree with the remarks about modern technology but to butress what Zoc said (new) technology should enhance horror. For example vampires are still a threat even though we can outrun them in cars. I think.
The challenge of the cell phone in horror is a cliche. The challenge of the internet/youtube wasn’t taken advantage of. Freddy’s been on television before, even in a videogame. He should have stalked Nancy online. Alas this film suffers from creative illiteracy.
The online stalking would have been fun to watch. Imagine some Facebook/Twitter turmoil going on. Lots of technological savvy that could have made the movie a standout was left out.
for the most part , I enjoyed the film. But it seemed that Freddy as a secondary character in his OWN FILM. More Freddy, more brutal kills, more fantasy element would have helped this good film be great!
That’s an interesting observation. Freddy is pretty much off focus here. More fantasy was definitely needed to really make this a nightmare on elm street.
Oh dear. When will this trend of ‘remaking’ classics come to an end? It really is, 99% of the time, pointless. As you say ‘Why bother?’