Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street

After a friend of theirs seems to slash his own throat in a diner, several teens (Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, Kellan Lutz, and Thomas Dekker among them) realise they are all having the same nightmares- of a sinister figure with steel blades for fingers. And when this evil being kills them in their dreams, they die for real. So it’s stay awake or die, for Nancy (Rooney Mara) and her friends, as their parents (Connie Britton and Clancy Brown being the most prominent) reluctantly offer up the revelation that their phantom killer is a man named Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), a former pre-school janitor who preyed on each of them when they were younger (despite none of the teens remembering that they actually went to pre-school together). Their parents confronted and put a stop to Freddy. Or so they thought. One, two, Freddy’s comin’ for you!

The “Elm Street” series of horror flicks were among the most imaginative of the 80s horror cycle (though entries spilled over into the 90s too), that can’t be denied. However, I’m not as beholden to Wes Craven’s 1984 original as others may be. It is a very good and perhaps landmark film in some ways, but the ending flat-out sucks, and Heather Langenkamp is a truly terrible actress. It’s still a cut above most 80s horror films, but I regard “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” as the best of the films. It was an imaginative entry with good humour, enjoyable characters, and slightly lesser participation from Ms. Langenkamp. Admittedly that film set the tone for subsequent entries that tried for the horror-humour combination with much lesser effect. The exceptions being the self-reflexive “New Nightmare” and the fanboy-ish “Freddy vs. Jason”, but the former I’ve always thought of as a dry-run for Craven’s better “Scream” and the latter was almost as much a “Friday the 13^th” film as a “Nightmare” film.

So I wasn’t all that offended by the very existence of this 2010 remake by debut film director Samuel Bayer, who comes from a music video background (He did Nirvana’s iconic “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, so that’s cool in my book!). I figured at the very least that they could fix that godawful ending and maybe fill in some details on Freddy Krueger’s background that were hinted at previously, such as his being a child molester (“Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” slightly hinted at it, and even in the original I always figured there was something foul that was unspoken. Remember his slightly sexual taunts to Nancy? Sure, she’s a teen, but still...) Well, the ending is indeed a massive improvement, and yes Freddy is indeed a child molester in this script by Eric Heisserer (“Final Destination 5”, the slightly superior 2011 remake of “The Thing”) and Wesley Strick (“Arachnophobia”, the overblown remake of “Cape Fear”, “Wolf”), which pleased me as Freddy is one of the few horror icons whose background I figured could be fleshed out more without losing any terror (more on that later). As for the rest? Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag and ultimately a near-miss, but there’s certainly some things here to like about it, even if the original is still the more iconic film. For an “Elm Street” film you could do a lot worse (the embarrassing “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge”, one of the worst horror films ever made), but also a lot better too, as in “Dream Warriors”. In fact, this in some ways reminds me of the remake of my all-time favourite horror film, “The Omen”. It’s watchable but the impact is much lesser.

Well, we certainly get things off to the right start, with the New Line Cinema logo accompanied by some very familiar music that will have fanboys grinning from ear to ear. The other thing that caught my attention early on in the film is the cinematography by Jeff Cutter (“Orphan”), and despite being filter-heavy, for once I have good things to say. Cutter employs the technique much differently to anything I’ve seen. Instead of saturating everything with a dull blue, bile green or piss yellow, Cutter gives us several different colours all at once on several occasions. The effect is unique and actually quite attractive, and the lighting in the film is tremendous too, a little similar to the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” remake. It’s a really stunning-looking film and the nightmares are visually well-done. I respect Heather Langenkamp as a cultural icon, but I always regarded her as a pretty terrible actress. The new Nancy, Rooney Mara, is twice as good, showing a lot more personality and skill than Langenkamp ever did. However, make no mistake: Langenkamp was awful, Mara is just…OK. According to IMDb, she apparently hated making the film and nearly quit acting because of it. Wow, I think that would’ve been a giant overreaction, even though I hated “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” passionately. Katie Cassidy (daughter of Keith Partridge) is...really, really hot, so I’ll forgive her for not being anything memorable as an actress here. Speaking of hot, Connie Britton (pretty much playing the Ronee Blakely role from the original) still looks damn hot. She’s so talented and it’s great to see her getting decent work these days, albeit mostly on TV. I’ve loved her since “Spin City”. While Kyle Gallner is essentially playing Johnny Depp from the original and doing a pretty decent job, Thomas Dekker gets to play the ‘other guy’, and has the necessary charisma for the part. I think he deserves a better career. Overall the performances aren’t exactly gripping, but at least some of them are believably sleep-deprived and troubled, Gallner and Dekker in particular (Beefcake Lutz apparently did go without sleep for his one big scene. Can’t say it terribly paid off, he’s not much of an actor at the best of times). The acting by and large is at least more impressive than in the original.

One of the big factors in the success or failure in any “Nightmare” remake not starring Robert Englund is going to be whoever replaces Englund as Freddy Krueger. And whilst former child star Jackie Earle Haley does an effective job at playing a creepy Freddy Krueger-as-child molester (a role he’s kinda played before in “Little Children”), when he plays the boogeyman horror movie character Freddy Krueger, he’s nowhere near good enough. In fact, he comes off like his “Watchmen” character Rorschach as a burns victim. Creepy and unpleasant sure, and it’s fair enough to go down that route after Freddy had been so watered down over the years. But is he menacing or violently threatening here? Not in the slightest, he’s terribly disappointing, and far too diminutive (Not that Robert Englund was Golem-sized himself, mind you). Is he malevolently funny? No, not really. Neither was Englund until the sequels, but this film wants to have a little of the Freddy from the sequels, and unfortunately, the one-liners just aren’t funny. The best?: ‘Wake up, you’re bleedin’!’- See what I mean? There’s another OK one about a ‘wet dream’ but that’s taken directly from “Elm Street 4: The Dream Master”, if I’m not mistaken. I liked his ‘I’m your boyfriend now!’ line to Nancy, a reminder of the earlier film, though. In fact, it’s delivered as a much creepier, less funny moment. Haley is terrific as the child molester in flashback scenes, but his utter failure as the malevolent demon of the dreamscape, is one of the film’s most serious flaws. He, and the film, just ain’t scary, folks. Worse still is the makeup. I get what they were aiming for- a realistic, burns victim vibe. They have failed. They do a decent job of keeping Freddy in the shadows at first, which is good because the makeup just isn’t up to snuff. In this re-imagining, Freddy looks like an albino Na’vi. It’s a silly visual, and just looks like icky make-up, oddly enough. I honestly think that Englund, ham or not, should’ve played the role. He could play the scary-and-funny post-burns Freddy in his sleep, and is plenty creepy enough to play him as Chester the Molester, too. Perhaps age was a factor, I don’t know. I just think he would’ve been a more complete package than Haley. The film brings up the same parental conspiracy thing that was hinted in the first film, and dealt with in “Freddy vs. Jason”, but it’s done even better in this film. The whole paedophilia/repressed memory angle is truly fascinating, thematically. I mean, these repressed memories from childhood could conceivably get jumbled up inside their heads and become nightmares of frighteningly real intensity. Theoretically I also like the idea that the parents attacked a guy who may not have actually been guilty. I mean, the were kids, what if the kids were mistaken? Obviously, like with the nightmares being possibly suppressed memories, that’s not actually the case (which surely isn’t a spoiler), but I like that the suggestion is there nonetheless. Kudos for all the news articles about teens dying in their sleep, an obvious nod to “Nightmare” creator Wes Craven who came up with the idea of the film after reading such real-life news articles. I also loved the CGI Freddy being in the walls of a house, ala “The Haunting” remake, only better. Not so awesome was a scene where two characters kiss...immediately after viewing some incredibly icky childhood photos. That was just plain wrong, dude. The film ticks many of the boxes in recreating images, sounds and scenes from the first film, including a redux of the school scene, including the rhyming song and knives on the chalkboard. Great stuff. Sadly we do not get a recreation of the Johnny Depp death scene, one of the greatest deaths in screen history. We do get a slightly similar one, but it’s completely hopeless, despite a gender switch this time. The bathtub scene is an old fave, but here it’s done in completely half-arsed fashion, like an old band who really want to play their new material and only play their hits begrudgingly because they don’t want the audience to leave. Featuring an actress who doesn’t have a no-nudity clause might’ve made it a bit better, too. The best decision made here is that the film improves on the original’s horrid, studio-imposed ending. We don’t see everyone magically still alive, nor do we get the dorky car gag twist. It only retains one part of that film’s ending, the best part of the ending, in my view. On the downside, it’s pretty slow-paced, which does hurt the film a bit, as does the lack of terribly interesting characters. It’s really the characters more than the actors that fail to grab you.

This film is a whole lot better than it should’ve and could’ve been, it only really fails on one level- horror. And sadly that’s a pretty important level to not mess up, given this is meant to be a horror film! It’s pretty well-made, aesthetically. It improves on some things from the original, whilst faltering on others, including an uneven villain. I thought it was pretty watchable the first time I saw it in 2010, but my second go-round in 2017  was a little less enjoyable. I guess I’d rank it as the third or fourth best Freddy film behind “Elm Street 3”, the original “Elm Street”, and probably “Freddy vs. Jason”, but after this and “The New Nightmare”, it’s a pretty steep decline. I’m sorta morbidly curious as to what “Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Take 2” would be like, but as of early 2017, it hasn’t turned up and probably won’t. In fact, I hear they’re doing another series reboot for whatever reason.

Rating: C+