Movie: A Nightmare on Elmstreet (2010)
By: Maniac E
Date: April 8, 2011
You know I always loved Nightmare on Elm Street even the crappier movies like part 2. Freddy is a special horror icon and you just wish the best for him. The way Englund portrayed the demon of sleep was just heartwarming to all horror fans. So when they said the new reboot for A Nightmare on Elm Street was a remake, my heart stopped for a few moments. Weirdest part of this all is that Englund wouldn’t be Freddy but some other actor.
So I start my journey of watching this movie without any expectations. I am getting kicked in balls right in the beginning of the movie already. They have made Freddy a scared bastard that was running away from a mob trying to burn him. Everything in this movie gets explained where the original makers let you fill in gaps on how and what Freddy did to his victims, here they show everything explaining it all why he did it etc. This just takes all the magic away from the character and really makes it a watered down story. Can't people nowadays fill things in for themselves? It’s hard to like a character when you know and see what he actually did with those children. In this version I am like; “Hey there is that child molesterâ€. They put it on too thick and yes child molesting is a very bad thing but in the original you didn’t need to see it all. It’s trying to be too serious.
The main characters can’t act; seriously acting school passed these people by. I have seen Haley act in Watchmen. He was really a monster in that role and really nailed the character in all its glory. But here in this movie it’s just not right he is just not getting the madness of Freddy right. Freddy has always been a sort of nightmare clownish sort of character with black humor and sadistic jokes. You really don’t care what happens to the kids in this movie, they really don’t have any backbones let alone character. Nancy in the original was a hard lady dealing with the fact that she was imagining maybe that Freddy was real. Here the kids aren’t friends and it shows in the movie there is no connection between the actors. Nancy is a girl that seems annoyed by Freddy instead of terrified. Really just doesn’t fit the movie at all.
One of the things that bugged me most about this movie was that they literally stole all kinds of scenes from older Nightmare movies. Shouldn’t have to be bad but here it is. The scenes aren’t adding anything new and me as fan of the series really made it horrible to look at. For instance the bathtub scene was awesome in the original but they so badly fucked this up! I am not a purist in any way but this was just bad and made me look away from the screen. Then we have the new scenes that would really help to set this movie apart from the original. We have a swimming pool scene where you see Gallner swim for over 5 minutes. And really nothing happens. Why bother to give your killer the ability to bend reality and rebuild his victims’ mental landscapes when you’re never going to take advantage of it?
Don’t make me laugh this really was one of the weakest horror movie killings since a long time. Basically it goes like this; I fall asleep, Freddy shows up, Freddy says something, I'm stabbed, and I’m dead. And I remember A Nightmare on Elm Street to have some blood in it, right? But here it seems almost no one bleeds. How can this be you have the mother of horror 80s movies and in the year 2010 you can’t even reproduce a massacre? Where is the creepy scene where Rod got strangled? I don’t know they just missed out on making a good remake.
Just go watch the original, it may be more than 20 years old but it still beats the shit out of this. Better yet go watch A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s revenge. Even that sequel is better than this piece of wasted time and money.
A Nightmare on Elmstreet (2010)
Samuel Bayer
USA
2010
Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker
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