A Nightmare on Elm Street Review

Well, I thought I'd kick off my blog with a review of a film I have anticipated for a very long time indeed. It's a fairly common thing these days for certain classic slasher films to be remade or re imagined. Michael Myers had his turn in 2007 when heavy metal superstar Rob Zombie decided to give audiences a new take on 1978's classic Halloween followed by Halloween 2 in 2009.
And lets not forget that Friday the 13th also got it's turn when it to was rebooted in 2009, giving us a new look and backstory of our favourite hockey mask wearing, machete wielding, sex crazed teen killing phenom Jason Voorhees. So, in light of those two maniacal characters being revamped it was only a matter of time before my personal favourite movie psycho and brainchild of horror genius Wes Craven sewed up his red and green striped sweater, dusted off his fedora hat and sharpened up his trusty glove 'o' death to once again take centre stage in our dreams. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the bastard son of a hundred maniacs…Freddy Krueger.


So, as we all know this is a remake of Wes Craven's 1984 horror classic of the same name, specifically designed to reboot the franchise. The original was based in a small, fictional town in Ohio called Springwood where child murderer Fred Krueger (portrayed by Robert Englund) resided. One night, the townsfolk of Springwood took it upon themselves to do something about Krueger after he was set free from prison on a technicality. The residents went to Krueger's lair in the abandoned power plant, his infamous boiler room and proceeded to set the building ablaze with Krueger trapped inside, burning him alive. But somehow he returned as a supernatural entity and began exacting his revenge on the town that murdered him by entering the dreams of any teenage offspring the citizens would later have. In the dream world Krueger was king and could manipulate and kill the kids in all kinds of horrendous ways. We all remember a young Johnny Depp, pulled through his bed and being reduced to a torrent of gravity defying claret. Armed with his glove of razor sharp blades he proceeded to stalk several teenagers who were the sons and daughters of the mob who killed him. Most memorably of course was Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) Krueger's one true foe and the unfortunate soul to reside at 1428 Elm Street. We all know how that went right? That's why you are here! To look at the new version of this tale.


This 2010 remake, released on Friday May 7th 2010 as I am in the UK follows the same general plot of it's original counter part with a few minor changes. The film directorial debut for Samuel Bayer, who up until now mainly directed many famous and popular music videos for a hell of a lot of various artists. Most notably Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and was produced by Michael Bay's production company Platinum Dunes. The film features Watchmen star and Academy Award nominee Jackie Earle Haley. Haley steps into the shoes of horror icon Robert Englund (who I have met by the way) to portray the infamous Krueger. Alongside Haley is a cast made up of a few familiar young faces such as Supernatural and Harper's Island star Katie Cassidy, Kyle Gallner of The Haunting in Connecticut, Thomas Dekker from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Aaron Yoo who also starred in 2009s Friday the 13th and of course Highlander's Kurrgan (the not so young) Clancy Brown. The story is again set in the same fictional town and features another heroine, this time named Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara) as opposed to the 1984 Nancy Thompson who, along with another band of sleep deprived and haunted high school students must do battle with the gloved menace in their dreams. The one real difference in plot is that this time Krueger is a supposed child molester where as in the original he was a certified child murderer and darn proud of his nickname "The Springwood Slasher".


"Did you know, after the heart stops beating the brain continues to function for seven more minutes? We got six minutes left to play" Freddy Krueger to Jesse.

Now, going in I was apprehensive due to the fact that I really disliked the new Halloween's and Friday the 13th remakes and everything I read and heard put this film in a very negative light. However, I was pleasantly surprised as I rather liked it. I'd decided to re-watch the entire franchise again in the week leading up to my seeing this so I noticed a few little things that made me smile. I have tried to limit spoilers, but I felt to fully convey my opinion there were things I needed to mention.

I love how they try to get away with casting people who are blatantly in their early twenties (Cassidy) to play high school students. I felt that Katie Cassidy's character Kris was by far the weakest link, her lines of dialogue were sloppy and whilst that is not her fault at all the way in which she delivered said lines was done rather poorly and to her detriment. This film, like most horror's nowadays does try to make the viewer jump way too many times, which might be fun if you're a seventeen year old guy on a date with a girl but at my age it's just trying too hard. I guess that this is just something we will have to expect from any modern day horror. I picked up on the fact that the three characters from this film shared names with characters from other films in the franchise. We obviously had Nancy but also Jesse (the protagonist of the second film) and Kristen (a girl in both part's three and four) probably just a coincidence but maybe not.

Jackie Earle Haley did rather a good job as Krueger, he has that eerie, raspy voice that echoes around you and both his costume and make-up looked rather cool. The make-up job was especially well done as it is the kind of look you would expect a serious burn victim to have. Compared to Englund's mask which began to look a little silly. Haley is naturally rather a creepy looking and scary sounding guy so he really did Freddy justice I thought. Even threw in a couple of cheesy one liners and a quote from the fourth film "How's about that for a wet dream".


The film also included three iconic scenes used in the 1984 film. The scene in which Kris is dragged and thrown across the ceiling before finally being slashed, the blink and you'll miss it Nancy in the bath scene where Krueger's glove emerges from the water and of course the scene in which Nancy witnesses a body bag containing Kris being dragged down the school corridor by an unseen force leaving behind a streak of blood. There's also a scene which I find to be Johnny Depp's death (from the original) in reverse. He was dragged through his mattress which then became a gusher of blood that spattered his ceiling, where as this film features Nancy running up a corridor which suddenly becomes a huge river of dark blood, she sinks and it pushed through the floor only to explode out of the ceiling (unharmed) on the other side via a similar gusher of blood before landing on the bed. The only real head nod back to the 80s that I failed to get was this film's constant use of the infamous boiler room. In the 80s version it was symbolic as it was Krueger's lair. He took children there, murdered them and disposed of their bodies in the furnace, but in this film he didn't murder kids. He abused them in his "secret cave" but there was no use of a boiler room. I guess they just used that for old times sake.

The effects of the film are also rather good. When Kris falls asleep in class and her classroom dissolves around her leaving her in a much darker classroom with Freddy clawing on the chalkboard and the scene where Nancy is in the supermarket which suddenly begins to flicker into the boiler room and then back to the supermarket were both very well done.

The story itself changes a bit and in a kind of clever way. in 1984 Krueger killed the kids to get back at the parents who killed him, here he kills the kids in order to first make them remember what he did to them as children and then to get revenge on them for telling their parents which led to his death. I also liked Quentin's little theory that Krueger was kind of like the Pied Piper, taking the kids to get revenge on a town that betrayed him, never thought of that before. And before I completely forget, I also adored the use of The Everly Brother's song "All I Have to Do Is Dream" the song features in the trailer and I just love how tongue in cheek it felt.

All in all, I say if you're really into the franchise you might like it. Or, you might think it's utter balls and despise it. I can't and don't want to make you think either way. But I liked it and give it a generous:

3/5.

P.s Although it is unclear if a sequel will emerge, whilst reading the June issue of Empire Jackie Earle Haley was quoted saying.

"I remember that the first one started off much more seriously, from there it started going more for the humour and irony. That's why right now I'm working on my tap-dancing lessons for the sequels".