A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
One week into its release, Platinum Dunes’ “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake has met with considerable box office success, a C+ Cinemascore score, and a lukewarm reaction amongst horror fans.
In its way, this new “Nightmare” film plays out like a greatest hits compilation of iconic moments from Wes Craven’s original 1984 film.
Freddy’s claw comes up from the water as Nancy (Rooney Mara) falls asleep in the tub; one of Freddy’s victims levitates high above her bed before claw marks rip suddenly across her torso; Freddy haunts the dream of a wrongly incarcerated teen and the list goes on.
More than anything else, director Samuel Bayer’s attempts to make the iconic Freddy Krueger (here played well enough by Jackie Earle Haley) scary again —after sequel after sequel did their best to make him anything but— only work when the director veers from or expands upon his source material.
The source material, of course, should be familiar to anyone who has seen the original film; teens in the Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio start to realize that they’re sharing a collective nightmare, one where a badly burned man in a fedora and striped sweater stalks them.
Dean (Kellan Lutz) sits in the Springwood Diner early in the film, his eyes blood shot and his dreams beginning to blend with reality. No longer able to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not, Dean confides in his friend, Kris (Katie Cassidy), that if he falls asleep again, he won’t wake up at all.
Soon, after a brutal murder, Kris and a group of Springwood teens start to look for answers, realizing that their parents are keeping something from them, something to do with a man named Fred Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley).
As Kris, Jesse (Thomas Dekker), Quentin (Kyle Gallner), and Nancy struggle to stay awake long enough to discover the truth, Freddy hunts them down, one by one.
Yes, the structure of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” owes much to the original film, perhaps too much.
Where Rob Zombie’s recent “Halloween” remakes veer considerably from their source material, Bayer’s “Nightmare” remake insists on hitting the notes most familiar to viewers and fans of the original film even at the expense of generating genuine suspense or horror.
Zombie’s effort made for a more studied, more frightening look at the boogeyman, keeping audiences slightly off balance and unsure what the film might do next.
That’s missing in the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake. Only visually does the remake truly chart its own course.
That’s a shame considering the moments where screenwriters Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer infuse the script with its nastiest aspects. Particularly, the remake plays with the idea of Krueger’s innocence, briefly flirting with the notion that the man accused of molestation and murder before his death might be innocent.
It’s an idea the film raises and drops quickly. Still, even when the teens learn the truth, it is nasty and something the film could have used more of. Instead, Bayer’s “Nightmare” remake is too ready to return to its familiar Freddy routes.
This “Nightmare” only flirts with originality and reinterpretation; it seems too scared, however, to do anything different.
The film manages to set a dire tone. A sense of foreboding haunts this remake, its characters (thanks largely to performances by Gallner, Rooney, and Cassidy) afraid of both their waking and dream worlds.
Or, at least that’s what a smarter, more daring film would have emphasized better.
The kids in Springwood have a choice, their lying, vigilante parents or Freddy Krueger, and the film only hints at that the nihilistic possibilities offered by a story where normality is just as monstrous as the monster.
The kids here suffer not because of sexual indiscretion, illegal drug use, or other immoral behavior as in the traditional slasher film but for their parent’s decisions to shield them from the horrors of the world.
That’s scary; “A Nightmare on Elm Street” can only claim that on occasion.
Grade: C+
