Was there really any call for remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street? Hollywood's full of a bunch of useless remakes nowadays. With the Death Wish remake on the horizon, one begs the question what constitutes the apparent "need" for a remake. Whether it be because times have changed and the story could use some updating, the special effects in the original were lame enough to want to stretch the horizons with these days' computer sciencey magic, or...the producer's just need to cash in on a well known title that basically replicates everything the original did. This...is where 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street comes in.
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| "How do I look?" |
The remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street does so much to try and change what the viewer remembers about the original movie in order to make it feel like it needed to be made. It makes enough changes to where you can differentiate between remake and original and compare and contrast the ideas behind each one. Then there are the things that are carried over from the original for no reason that have no bearing or meaning in the remake. Like...Freddy's finger gloves. In the original, you watch a charred hand build the glove and assemble it from various bits. You can guess that Freddy has some kind of tool-building experience and the first nightmare shows a boiler room, confirming this. In the remake, Freddy's just some perverted gardening child-molester who just so happens to have the glove...somehow.
The original movie originally had Freddy as a child molester, but changed it to a child murderer to avoid exploitation of recent child molestation cases that had been happening in California at about that time. The remake decided to restore that idea, which makes it just a teeny little bit uncomfortable. Especially where the plot takes it. It's not necessarily a bad change, because making him a child molester has better substance that a measly old child killer. Both seem to work, because a child killer means Freddy just kills at random, which would explain why he decided to target random kids on Elm Street. The remake's also works because having him target a specific group of kids for "getting him killed" is also a good twist. However, this change doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the context of the title of the movie. In the original it made sense, the killings occurred on around Elm Street, and solely on or around Elm Street. With the remake, Nancy lives on Elm Street, sure, and gets stalked there a few times, but hardly any murders take place on Elm Street. I think maybe just Kris's murder...and that's it...
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| "You have something in your hair. Let me get it." |
So, the movie opens in the Springwood Diner. There's a guy who demands for more coffee, but the waitress ignores him. The bitch. He walks through the back of the diner only to be slashed at by some burned weirdo in a fedora hat, tattered Christmas sweater and finger-knives. Later, we see him kill himself apparently on the influence of the burned man in his dream. Kris, the girl he was with, tells people that she thinks someone in his dream was forcing him to do it. Surprise, no one believes her. She begins suspecting that something is rotten in the state of Springwood, as at the dude's funeral, she sees a picture of him and her together when they were kids, which she didn't know they knew each other when they were kids. Interesting, but this begs the question: If dude's mother didn't give a shit about posting the pictures and reminding everyone that the kids knew each other in their youth, then was it really a huge point to keep such a secret from them? Jesse tries to console Kris at the funeral (i.e. pick up on her) but her and Nancy confirm that they're both seeing the same man in their dreams. Kris decides to go home, but Jesse joins her and consoles her that night. She has another nightmare where Freddy kills her and Jesse is pegged for the murder, having her blood splattered all over him. Jesse is put in a cell, and falls asleep himself. Their, Freddy kills him too. So, again, following the story scheme of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, the girl we're introduced to as the first main character dies, then we get a second and actual main character in Nancy.
Nancy's new actress...sucks. The acting in the movie is pretty dry from pretty much all parties. Nancy's a block of wood and her mother Gwen is the pallet she came on. A few of the kids try though, like Kris and Quentin. Kris sobs quite a bit and Quentin has really intense screaming matches with his father. The other kids are just...horrible. Hayden Christensen-style horrible. Nancy's the worst. Heather Langenkamp showed a lot of emotion and intensified horror during the entirety of the first movie. Rooney Mara just sort of injected herself with novacane and prozac and washed it down with a gallon of gin before each take. She was just bad. There were times she got a little intense and panicky, but most of it followed the same kind of formula: dry to the bone.
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| Jackie Earle Haley's reaction when he read the script |
Jackie Earle Haley is the man who dons the fedora and sweater as the new Freddy Krueger. He's referred to in the remake as "Fred Krueger" as well, just as in the original. In the original, Freddy was a boiler room worker who also doubled as a homicidal child killer in his spare time. In the remake, Freddy was a gardener at a pre-shool where the main characters attended as children. He molested them all and then their parents found out about it, chased him into an abandoned steel mill, threw a gallon of gas through the window and burnt him alive. Years later, Freddy begins stalking them in their dreams. Where and when he got this power to return and start killing the kids in their dreams isn't explained at all. Another example of something from the original that just carries over into this one without any explanation. Sure, the original didn't get its explanation until like the third or fourth movie, but by then the franchise was so out-of-control that it was a pretty crazy, 80's-style explanation that "dream demons" came to Freddy at the time of his burning and granted him such powers. In the remake, he was just an ordinary guy who burned alive. Plus, it's a little like it's..not Freddy. Freddy was and always will be synonymous with Robert Englund, who made him a wise-cracking homicidal child killer. Robert Englund played Freddy in all of his on-screen appearances except for this one, so yeah...the role is basically his forever. Casting Jackie Earle Haley just made people know that it wasn't going to be Freddy, but some guy pretending to be Freddy. His voice? It's just his Rorschach voice from Watchmen. The way he says "Look at me!" near the end says so itself. What I did like about this Freddy was the realistic burn sars on his face. The other one was decent for it's time, but as it wore on it got to look more fake and rubbery. I guess latex technology just never improved. This Freddy looks like a guy who literally got set on fire.
There's a few scenes that either rip-off or pay homage to the original movie. The body bag scene in the hallway, the glove coming out of the bathtub water during Nancy's bath, Freddy's line "I'm your boyfriend now"; all of which serve to remind you that you are, in fact, watching the remake. There's points where you forget this movie is a remake when it starts to stray from the original movie's material, then an homage like that comes through and you're snapped out of a daze like "Oh yeah, this is the remake".
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| Looks like a nu metal reverse album cover |
The movie ends when Quentin and Nancy return to the pre-school years after it had shut down to face Freddy once and for all. They realize that Freddy had indeed molested them, and rather spend the rest of their lives fearing him and staying awake, they both decide to go to sleep to fight Freddy in the dream world. Freddy terrorizes them and does some rapey-style things to Nancy (except actually really anything). Quentin stabs Nancy while she's asleep with a syringe of adrenaline and wakes her up. With her hands on Freddy, she brings Freddy out of the dream world and into the real world with her. There, while he's mortal, Quentin and Nancy tag-team fight Krueger. The movie ends with Nancy slitting Krueger's throat and killing him...again. Then she sets the pre-school on fire and watches it burn to the ground, leaving the burnt-Krueger to burn alive again. It's not really a solid ending. Bring Krueger back to life just to kill him again. Wouldn't that send him back to the dream world? The Blu-ray ending is even worse. Krueger literally changes his appearance back to the way he was before he was burned, then the same ending happens then, with his skin still looking like he did, Nancy and Quentin burn the school down again. So instead of double-burning him, now they just burned him again. Lame-sauce. The ending-ending is where after killing Freddy, Nancy and her mother return home. Nancy says "Hey mom, thanks for just protecting me". Nancy's mom then goes to respond, but Freddy bursts out of a mirror, kills Nancy's mother, and sucks her back into the mirror, leaving Nancy to scream as the credits roll. Wow.
So, in a nutshell, was A Nightmare on Elm Street in need of a remake? Yes and no. Basically, the original is such a staple of the 1980's slasher horror movie renaissance that remaking it basically had no hope from the get-go. It's like remaking Back to the Future or The Godfather, you're just not going to beat what's already been done, and if your intention is not to beat it or change everything then there is no point of remaking it. (I'm looking at you, Gus Van Sant, with your shot-for-shot "must change nothing" attitude). The 2010 remake is okay. It's definitely not great, but it also takes a lot of liberties, way more than it needed to. There's a lot of material that's original, but it pulls you back in with its homages to the original. I enjoy it occasionally, but Wes Craven didn't so I guess it sucks. Na na na-na naaaa. Give it a go if you haven't, but don't expect to break new ground.
Sorry Freddy, but I liked Jason's remake a little better....
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