A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) R
A remake of the original, this film follows the same plot. Teenagers who live on Elm Street are being killed off one by one in their dreams by a supernatural killer named Freddy Krueger. Either they wake up screaming or wind up dead in their sleep. They, then, decide to try to stay alive, and/or stop him.
I generally am not a big fan of “slasher” films. They can be cold, depressing, and more annoying than actually scary. Plus, I don’t like watching poor, defenseless pretty women get brutally murdered. At the same time, I do like some films that happen to fit into that category—the creative, well-plotted ones, that actually have characters you care about. That’s probably why the first A Nightmare on Elm Street freaked me out back in the day. About three people got killed in the original, although it felt like more. The film was a mix of scary sound effects, music, atmosphere, concept and really freaky images. Whatever anyone may feel about that film, one can’t deny how effective it was.
They too like sound effects in the new movie, but they’re often from the constant jump moments accented by loud musical tones. You know, the usual stuff. After the third scene like that, I think my brain started to shut down. They might as well use stock footages by now. The CG in this film is also poor. There’s a horrible shot where Freddy is emerging out of the wall (one of the best scenes in the original), but he is like a cartoon wobbling in a liquid-like wall. Some of the killings here are also more artificial and noticeably CG, which sometimes worked in a campy way (I understand you don’t want to make it too realistic, either). While the story is pretty obvious by now, in much of the running time, we’re waiting for that "great reveal" on why these kids are having dreams and getting killed.
The characters here aren’t engaging. Rooney Mara plays Nancy Holbrook, the main heroine from the first film. She is presented here kind of like an artsy goth-girl, who feels like a secondary character who should be in a different movie—maybe Twilight. The Nancy from the original, on the other hand, was determined, smart, and really pushed the story along. Much of the writing doesn’t make the new Nancy shine nor do anything too significant—she’s like a victim most of the time. Her boyfriend, Quentin (Kyle Gallner), unfortunately, doesn’t bring much to the table, either. The parents in this film play almost no real active role. Maybe that’s an indictment on modern parenthood. Who knows?
The main villain, Freddy, is now played by Jackie Earle Haley. His performance was unsettling, but not the way I like it. In this film, it is revealed that he was a child molester, an aspect which took out much of the fun out of the movie. Letting oneself to be scared by a movie villain is part of the fun, but why would anyone want to let themselves be scared by a child molester? It made him more dislikable than scary. The Joker, for example, may’ve been scary, but he was likable. Perhaps the subject is too much of a serious one to be in a supernatural horror film.
I, like many, have problems with remakes…it’s often all about capitalizing on the name of a well-known movie. Some say that such a film should be judged on its own merits—I say, then change the name! You really can’t have it both ways, riding on the coattails of another yet trying to be its own individual. The film's ending appears to be lifted from yet another Freddy-related movie with the same line used, but I won’t reveal which, except that that film’s ending was much more effectively done and certainly more entertaining overall despite its silly conceit of--oops, I almost said too much. * out of **** stars.
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