The remake trend has reached a new low. Instead of taking in a new direction Wes Craven’s ideas from the first film that was released way back in 1984, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2010 does little to develop the story. And worse it delivers visuals that are neither uniquely stylish or arresting enough to move viewers. While not a terrible film, music video director Samuel Bayer has given us a completely forgettable NIGHTMARE.
Diving immediately into the Freddy world this 2010 NIGHTMARE starts with exactly what one would expect in a teen horror film—gruesome images leading to a bloody death. When troubled Dean (Kellan Lutz) appears to cut his throat in front of his best friend Kris (Katie Cassidy) while working on his umpteenth cup of coffee, kids on the sleepy street of Elm understandably start having bad dreams. But as anyone who has seen the original franchise knows, the dreams of the shapely teens all have one common denominator—Freddy Krueger. A puppet master who toys with kids while they sleep, Freddy was a frightful creation by horror auteur Wes Craven back in the 1980s. And Craven’s original NIGHTMARE caught teen viewers by surprise with a gritty storyline about parents who harbor a dark secret that begins to affect their children and the boogieman who haunts them.
Unfortunately, after many sequels and an inventive reboot by Craven himself back in 1994, this new stab at the old material is flat and completely unengaging. And this is a real pity. One would think that in his long awaited feature debut, music video director Samuel Bayer could overcome the lack luster story and present some sort of visual style that jolted viewers. Bayer has an impressive videography including iconic music videos for Nirvana—the Smells Like Teen Spirit video is Bayer’s. But ironically, this new Freddy film feels indistinguishable from the sequels made 20 years before it. While technology has improved, the look of this 2010 film can’t be called better than the original source material.
Of course, there is something to be said for the creepy old school techniques used to create Wes Craven’s 1984 semi horror classic, and to Bayer’s credit, this new NIGHTMARE does seem to go in that direction instead of relying on computer generated effects entirely. The question begged is WHY? Why would a new imaging of the NIGHTMARE franchise feel so staid and flat and frankly dated? Bayer may have wanted not to betray the first film and merely introduce Freddy to a new generation of viewers not previously familiar with the potent villain (it is possible given the time that has passed). And if that is his intention, the film succeeds only marginally, because this youthful generation has seen far scarier films than this NIGHTMARE and like the renewed interest in vinyl record albums might do better to rent the original (especially if a Blu-Ray were available).
More the pity is the wasteful use of certain cast members. As Jeff Marker points out in this week’s Film Fix show, the parents in NIGHTMARE (2010) are so underused and undeveloped that the mystery they are harboring is rendered unimportant. Veteran bad guy actor Clancy Brown plays one of the parents and is hardly given enough to do to make us care about his son who is critical to the film. All the parents in the movie appear to be single, a fact that is not mentioned and could have been developed somehow. This is the fault of the script, written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer, that has been either cut and reduced to provide more nightmare sequences or was originally so lean that it expects its audience to know the Freddy mythology already. Perhaps Bayer and company thought that the shorthand that many viewers brought into the new film would qualify for backstory when all people really wanted to see was Freddy slice and dice and deliver creepy one liners.
And the comeback is complete for one time child star Jackie Earle Haley playing Freddy with a zest that can be admired. The heavily make-up covered Haley makes one creepy Freddy Krueger. And the one-liners are lurid and, at times, darkly humorous. But the Freddy origin story is poorly paced, making the mystery why Freddy is haunting and killing the Elm street teens, largely an afterthought.
If the hope was to reignite the NIGHTMARE franchise, this new Freddy flick provides little spark.
