If you have been alive for the past two months then you have heard about the Nightmare on Elm Street remake that has slithered its way into theaters over the weekend. I must admit that I had absolutely no want to pay to see this film with my own money, however someone graciously pony’d up the dough so that I could watch this re-imagining of one of horror’s biggest icons. Does it remotely scratch the surface of the original or is this just another money-making scheme via Michael Bay and his assembly line remake machine, Platinum Dunes?
First of all, if you have never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street movie then this is absolutely not where you want to begin. The depth and imagination of the original film by Wes Craven is a must see for anyone with eyeballs and love for horror films. Now for the new version, I can honestly say that first time feature director Samuel Bayer tried the best that he could with what he was given, and what he was given was absolute garbage. The fact that this script was approved by anyone with creative power at New Line Cinema boggles the mind as it must have been one of the worst pieces of writing that Hollywood has ever seen. Writers Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer took everything that remotely worked in the original and just sullied it in every single way possible. Despite the awful script that the cast and crew had to deal with, there must have been a handful of people with talent that did what they could on set because from watching 45 minutes of this, one can clearly see the atrocity that almost was.
It is pretty hard to give a spoiler-free plot overview of this movie so I am just going to stick with the basics. A group of kids that live on Elm Street are having nightmares about a burned man in a fedora with razor-fingers. He stalks each teen one by one waiting for them to fall asleep so that he can immediately kill them and string them up in his boiler-room dream world. As the body count rises, the remaining prey begins to put pieces together about their connection to each other and to the demon known as Freddy Krueger. Thus they struggle to find out the truth before it is too late and Freddy exacts his revenge.
YAY
- Jackie Earl Haley does a pretty good job of depicting the iconic dream demon. Yes, there are moments when he sounds like Rorschach from Watchmen, but there are times when he gets up in his victims’ faces and snarls at them right before they meet their gruesome fate. I only wish that his version of Freddy was given more mind-bending set pieces to exercise the spectrum of terrible that Freddy Krueger’s character thrives on. Robert Englund will always be remembered as the real deal, but that does not mean that an alternate take on the character can not be perfected by someone else. I swear that if Haley were given some scenarios where he was turning into a spider or some other trippy thing then maybe audiences and critics would accept him more. But, I suppose that is the writer’s fault once again though huh?
- Kyle Gallner plays his character, Quentin, quite well except for a few scenes where his character changes his mode of thinking inexplicably. However, he is an appropriate replacement for Johnny Depp’s character as his reactions and dispositions update well with the times.
NAY
- The writing is just awful.
- Events of the 1984 classic that are redone in this movie are executed with pure and utter laziness. This is where director Samuel Bayer just seemingly did not care enough about doing the old things correctly and spends more time on the stupid jump scares that this remake brings to the table. The wall scene looks laughable on the big screen and the bathtub shenanigans looks like it is out of a well done porno flick.
- How Nancy is depicted in this film is one of the worst aspects of it, period. She has less to do with the original Nancy and is actually more like a clone of Janie Briggs from Not Another Teen Movie. She spends more of her time with her hair pulled back, glasses on, and painting god awful pictures of what looks to be terrible renditions of anything artistic done by Tim Burton.
- About two of the deaths are even worthwhile. The rest of them are not even gory enough to be excited about the next one that is inevitably going to follow.
That is the best I can do without ruining any sort of plot points in the film. I can assure you that this remake does have some originality to it, but it is stuck in the background behind everything that is terrible. Is this the worst film of the year so far? Probably not. Is it one of the worst remakes ever done? Its up there. Is it the worst Nightmare film? Hell no! Freddy’s Revenge takes that hands down. If you are reading this to see if the theater is the right place to see this movie then I implore you to reconsider. Instead, find yourself a big TV with loud speakers, a bunch of horror fanatics and a room with no lights on so you can watch the original, Dream Warriors or the famed and hilarious Freddy Vs. Jason. Any of the three will suffice your need for some Krueger actions.
Couldnt agree more man. The overuse of jump cut scares, the lack of any modicum of creativity with the nightmare sequences. It just felt bland. Even the kids chanting the Freddy nursery rhyme, one of my favorite creepy ass parts of the series, didn’t seem quite right.
I know man, but it all boils down to the script. The two dudes that wrote it did not care at all about the film being remotely decent. Instead, Brad Fuller and Michael Bay cut their checks and probably said, “make this money back, we do not care what else happens”.