Movie Review - Nightmare On Elm Street

A Nightmare On Elm Street

(2010)

New Line Cinema / Platinum Dunes : New Line Cinema / Warner Home Video

2.25 / 10

Once, the production house of New Line Cinema meant new and groundbreaking films, especially the Nightmare On Elm Street Series, and excluding the terrible part VI - Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, were pretty decent at doing that.

So they decide to try and breath life into a long dead Kruger and bring the nightmares back to life for a new set of fans...

... er... 

No.

This is a travesty of a reboot.  

Mistake number one - they try to remake the first film with a few "adjustments" to the storyline to make it fresh and bring it up to date.  This isn't fully utilised, as we're living in a modern world with internet, cell phones, and all types of other gizmo's that should have featured in the nightmare-scapes of Krueger's victims.  See the tongue, out of the phone in the original part two, Freddy's Revenge, and Freddy's knives becoming syringes in the original part three, Dream Warriors.

Mistake number two - Bad direction, Samuel Bayer relies on sound bursts way too much to make his audience jump.  This is sloppy directing.  With a story most people know, if you're not going to give your audience something new then you have to do a good job of being able to really scare them.  There's NO build up of tension or suspense and this creates a lack of atmosphere that was very tangible in the original run.

Mistake number three - Bad characterisation.  None of the cast appears to have any depth, they all feel more two-dimensional than three.  This isn't too bad a thing with the minor characters, but with the main characters, it's essential to create empathy and to feel sadness and terror when their situations take a turn for the worst.  The major calamity in this instance is Freddy Krueger, where Robert England made it his own, Jackie Earle Haley comes nowhere near.  This is more than a shame as Haley is a good actor, who did a splendid job as Rorschach in Watchmen.  If he had produced a character similar in mannerisms, as the Nightmare Krueger, this would have helped make him a more terrifying and powerful character, which Freddy IS.  However, this Freddy isn't anybody to be scared of Robert England is still KING!

Everything that a horror film should be is missing from this movie.

What could have made the movie better?

Do Not remake the first film; use a completely different story.  Skipp and Spector, two great horror writers helped pen the original part five, The Dream Child.  It was also reported they'd wrote a story for the sixth film, "Bastard Son Of A Thousand Maniacs",  which is one hell of a title and it went all the way back to Freddy's conception.  This would have been an awesome place to start.  Add in better characterisations and you're on your way.

Then you would have to get a director that understood horror, terror, and suspense, as well as Wes Craven, did.

Next, add imagination, which was rife in the original series... a bed cloth twisting and turning itself into a noose, a boy's veins pulled out of his body to make him a human puppet.  Come on people nightmares are people's imagination dropped into the Darkside.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, save your money... or better yet spend it on buying the original film series box set and see how it should be done.