Country: USA
Genre: Fantasy / Horror / Thriller
Direction: Samuel Bayer
Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, Rooney Mara, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton
A re-imagining of the horror icon Freddy Krueger, a serial-killer who wields a glove with four blades embedded in the fingers and kills people in their dreams, resulting in their real death in reality.
Download A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Movie Review:
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a remake of the classic 1984 horror film of the same title written and directed by the legendary Wes Craven. This version, produced by Michael Bay’s remake/childhood memory rape machine Platinum Dunes, is written by Wesley Strick (Doom, Arachnophobia) & Eric Heisserer and is directed by Samuel Bayer (various music videos). It re-casts the iconic role of Freddy Krueger who has always been played by Robert Englund up to this point with Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen, Little Children). It also stars Kyle Gallner (Veronica Mars, Jennifer’s Body), Clancy Brown (Starship Troopers), Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights), Katie Cassidy (Melrose Place remake), and Rooney Mara (Youth In Revolt).
If you’re not familiar with the plot then you’ve been living in a cave apparently, so I won’t waste space here going over that familiar ground.
So the thing is A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the most iconic films of all time. Robert Englund’s Freddy is like Mickey Mouse in terms of being iconic. And for my generation these films are revered. The Elm Street series may have taken some poor turns but they were always exciting and always were something to look forward to. Especially the original. This remake takes pieces of the original, but doesn’t adhere to the same story. Essentially it’s a different movie featuring Freddy Krueger. Besides him and the title (and some backstory, kinda sorta) they only kept Heather Langenkamp’s character of Nancy, although really she’s the same in first name only.
So it’s quite understandable that for the entire length of this movie all I really felt was angry. Angry that such a brilliant, iconic, piece of cinematic history could be pissed all over by an unnecessary remake. I’d really like to know why this film was even the least bit necessary. I in theory understand the thought behind this. They want to get the audience and money from a Freddy film, but want to get a new, younger, audience into the franchise since all us old Freddy fans are, well, old. However this is completely insane. As bad as some of the sequels were, you could easily get my ass to a theatre with another sequel featuring Englund in the starring role. You’d probably wind up with a much bigger audience, because honestly I don’t want to see my childhood raped (if you think that’s a strong term it’s not) and I’m not the only one.
Anyway so like I said this film for some reason changes all the characters and everything, but is essentially the same as the original plot-wise. But it’s insanely flawed. This starts from the very first scene. In it we meet someone we’ve never seen before who tells his girlfriend (?) that he’s having nightmares that are coming real. Then he gets killed. Of course it looks like a suicide. But we’ve literally known this character for all of 5 minutes and don’t care. But every other character in the movie is deeply effected by this death. The main problem here is that we’re never really told or shown in any way that these other characters had any present day connection to him (of course they have a childhood connection that they are unaware about) that would make his death have such a significant impact.
Next we find that they’re all having dreams about the same guy, we’re mostly shown only one girl actually experiencing this and just having other characters say it. Then pretty suddenly the entire focus of the movie shifts to who our two eventual leads are, Quentin (Gallner) and Nancy (Mara). It’s sort of an odd shift in focus.
The really big change here is the focus on the backstory. A lot of time is dedicated to telling the backstory of what happened to Freddy and his history with these kids. This wasn’t entirely a bad thing, but I felt like they should have played it a little less. A big complaint of mine is that the deaths are pretty unoriginal. All horror fans, especially Freddy fans, love unique kills and these are pretty un-unique. I mean everyone remembers the incredible bed scene in the original Nightmare. There’s nothing in this film that even holds a candle to that.
Original article
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