Feature Film Review - A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Rating:

In 1984, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street captivated horror fans by introducing an evil icon that would rival that of Halloween’s Michael Myers and Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees. Craven’s violent visage took the form of a child-murdering psychopath named Fred Krueger played by Robert Englund. This scorched marauder of dreams would prove to have high slasher stamina as Freddy would be haunting promiscuous teens for years to come. With his razor glove now caked with the blood of seven sequels, Freddy has been resurrected once more and added to list of recent horror remakes.

In charge of this addition to the Platinum Dunes remake revival (see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th) is fledgling director Samuel Bayer. Essentially a music video director, Bayer seemed a risky bet, but the bet was soon hedged when casting was finalized. The production managed to secure one of film’s most intriguing commodities in Oscar-nominee Jackie Earle Haley for the role of Krueger. The last few years has been good for Haley with solid work in Little Children, Watchmen, and Scrosese’s Shutter Island. Haley seemed more than competent to fill the evil glove of Englund.

The new Nightmare follows the template of the original faithfully, but does do a bit of reorganization with story’s characters and chooses to take liberties with the narrative on occasion. The basics still remain intact.

Fred Krueger, a gardener for a local pre-school, is found to be a rampant child molester. An enraged group of parents track down Krueger at an abandoned boiler house and take justice into their own hands by setting the building afire. Krueger is burned alive and left for dead. Years later, the children of the vigilante parents begin to have vivid nightmares of Freddy with his handmade razor glove. These dreams turn out to be much more because the spirit of the diabolical murderer has found a way to harm, and even kill, the children while they sleep.

Kris will not forget her hall pass next time.

Results of this recent reincarnation of Freddy vary widely across the spectrum from wildly ridiculous to suitably suspenseful. The former is more the case at the beginning where the only sense of horror comes from the dreadful dialogue. The film, however, does revert course and manages some edgy sequences that allow Freddy to save some face. Actually, this remake doesn’t besmirch the original, which is far from a classic, but actually makes a noticeable improvement on the ending that horror fans should appreciate.

Earle Haley does well in the role of Krueger - looking more like some burnt scarecrow than an actual man. The story chooses to develop Krueger more as a pedophile than a murder, a fact simply implied in the original. This may have influenced the decision to go with Earle Haley because of Oscar-nominated role as a child molester in Little Children. Is it disconcerting to be typecast as a pedophile? Anyway, he proves a worthy successor of the grandstanding king of camp Englund.

The mood is quite different in this remake as everything is well lit and open for all to see. This is in direct opposition to the original where Freddy slinks among the shadows and roams the dark corridors of the boiler house. In this age of effects it is no wonder that directors want to put everything on display, but evil always seems more powerful underexposed.

Adam is the founder of www.featurefilmreview.com. Email comments to adam (at) featurefilmreview (dot) com.