Nightmare on Elm Street

I saw the new Nightmare on Elm Street the other day and with all the reboots and remakes Hollywood is doing I’m puzzled by this one. What could have been a very good movie really wasn’t too interesting. It’s a shame too, because this one really had potential. First, let me start off by saying that I’m not really into the horror movie genre. It has never been my style but I respect all the classics, whether they’re from the 30’s & 40’s or late 70’s & 80’s. There were certain elements to those films that made them legitimately scary. Perhaps it was the graininess, simplicity, and suspense factor all mixed together. I was in my late teens until I saw Halloween I & II (the originals), which in the opinions of the hardcore fans is unacceptable. Nonetheless, those two films were great and to this day represent the definition of the horror genre.

With this remake of Nightmare on Elm Street none of the important factors were really there. First, they showed Freddie way too early (right in the beginning actually), which is a bad mistake because you want to create suspense for the audience. They should have started by showing how Freddie became Freddie and later on explained the reasons. Instead they showed it an hour or so into the film and it was a dream sequence of one of teenage victims. I particularly found that to be weird and annoying because how can a teenage boy have a dream of past events when he wasn’t even there or weren’t his memories? It made no sense. Speaking of dream sequences there were almost 100 of them. I know that’s the whole point of the Nightmare storyline but when every other fucking scene is a dream sequence I’m reminded of the last two seasons of The Sopranos where Tony has them every episode and it’s irritating.

As for Jackie Earle Haley, the actor who played Freddie, he did a decent job. His version of Freddie was different than Robert Englund’s, which it should have been. However, he pretty much used the same voice from his Rorschach character in Watchmen. Also, his presence wasn’t that commanding or scary. I did like the make-up for Freddie though. He actually looked like a burn victim.

At its core Nightmare on Elm Street was really just a nightmare. Very few horror films these days do the trick. Many directors and writers always go for the quick bloody kills without taking the correct time to establish a storyline and suspense factor.

Overall: D+/C-