Search form

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010) (*1/2)

Check Out the Trailer

Exec #1: Hey lets remake an iconic ‘80s horror movie. Exec #2: Sounds great, kids these days don’t want anything new; they just want to see the same story with more blood and shock. Exec #3: You’re right… and this way we really don’t need to hire screenwriters. Exec #4: We can just string all the best kills from the other films together with CG. Exec #5: Yeah, kids like CG. Exec #6: What’s for lunch?

That’s what you get in this pitiful excuse for a horror film. The story throws us right into a “creepy” dream with no character development. The first half of the film proceeds to be one kid falling into a dream where Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley, LITTLE CHILDREN) kills them. It literally goes from killing the first victim (Kellan Lutz, TWILIGHT series) to the blonde girl (Katie Cassidy, TAKEN) to her ex-boyfriend (Thomas Dekker, THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES) before we even get to know the main character other than she’s a loner waitress (Rooney Mara, THE SOCIAL NETWORK).

So after the dead teens have adequately piled up, the teen waitress and her new boyfriend (Kyle Gallner, JENNIFER’S BODY) try various means to stay awake as they investigate who Freddy Krueger was. New boyfriend confronts his father (Clancy Brown, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) and teen waitress with black nail polish who draws asks her mother who wears glasses (Connie Britton, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS). In the credits it says the mother is a doctor. Ah, that explains the glasses. As you might have already figured out, the names of the characters are rather pointless.

All the classic kills and chill moments are there. The levitating from bed, claw in the bathtub, the blood on the ceiling, the boiler room, etc. etc. But what longtime music video director Samuel Bayer and screenwriters Wesley Strick (THE GLASS HOUSE) and Eric Heisserer (FINAL DESTINATION 5) don’t get is that clever kills and creepy atmosphere don’t make a film scary. It takes pacing, which this film has none. Each scene quickly moves into another dream, which quickly moves back to the real world in order to move into another dream. The plot seems to be afraid that the audience will forget that this is a horror flick where people die in their dreams, so it rushes to get back into one. To be scary, it also takes characters we care about. Characters? What say you?

Some might think it’s sacrilegious to say that this franchise could have used a remake. The original, while clever, was not perfect. But it was far superior to this trite crap. Wes Craven at least understood this storytelling device called suspense. The only thing this film improves on the original is in the casting. The actors are better than the original for the most part. But there isn’t a Johnny Depp in this lot for sure. And sadly to say, Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley is not Robert Euglund.

With his more realistic burn make-up, Haley tries to be more menacing and less campy. It totally backfires. The performance is one note – a low growl. Krueger’s pedophile backstory is played up more. In one scene, the clawed monster toys sexually with the teen waitress while she is dressed up like a little school girl. This could be vastly unsettling, but by this point in the film, the story hasn’t earned the right to go there, so it comes off as tasteless and gratuitous. Lots of actors get type casted, but being the go to pedophile has to suck. Haley’s performance even robs us of Krueger great one-liners, which he delivers like they’re any other line. This makes them even cheesier than Euglund’s tongue-in-cheek approach ever did.

The idea of a monster that can kill us in our dreams is frightening. Is there a more vulnerable state than being asleep? And anyone can relate to being so tired that we can’t keep our eyes open. What if keeping your eyes open was the only thing keeping you alive? Exec #7: Oh, that’s why it’s supposed to be scary. I get it now. Me: It’s a little too late.

Rick DeMott's picture

Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks