A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

Date Released: April 30, 2010
Director:  Samuel Bayer
Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker
Genre: Horror
Rating: 5.1/10 (IMDB.com)

     I really have to start updating my Netflix queue to have movies come that I actually want to see.  Low and behold the remake of Wes Cravens original classic "A Nightmare On Elm Street" (1984) arrived.  It came, I saw, I disliked.

     Must I go into elaborate detail about this mindless, complete waste of time?  We all probably know the whole story about Freddy Kruger; He was a child molester who was burned to death by an angry mob of parents in a boiler room.  Now, as if he was unjustifiably killed, Satan (I'm guessing) allows him to haunt and kill the very children he molested in their dreams.  Nice. 

     Lets go over what was good about the movie.  The special effects were OK, the acting wasn't terrible, and the dream sequences were semi-creative.  A trend with many of these new films is that they rely heavily on CGI and insult the audience in thinking we are too stupid to appreciate a solid storyline with good dialogue.  Jackie Earle Haley does a good job as the new Freddy Kruger.  The problem is we all grew up and loved the old Freddy, which prevents people from adapting to the new face and voice.  Dismissing my bias for the old Freddy, the new Freddy was kind of entertaining and visually cool.  The music score was pretty good too, except that it was just a rip-off of the original score.

     Let's highlight the bad points.  It's a horror movie!  There are lots of teenagers being killed with not much creativity.  Although I must say, I did laugh when Freddy hung the poor teen upside down and told him he still had "six minutes of fun left to play with him" before his ripped open stomach would officially expire him.  The movie follows the same storyline as the original films; pull Freddy out of the dream and into reality so they can kill him.  But, is he really dead?  The track record of movie companies wanting to make a profit says NO!

     Why must Hollywood remake everything? Why can't they just leave some of the classic, culturally significant films alone? My guess is, the almighty dollar.  Unless you are trying to get your date to hug you out of terror on Halloween night, don't bother seeing this movie.  And that probably won't happen anyway considering the movie isn't scary and because you rented the remake of "A Nightmare On Elm Street."

     

My Rating: 5.4/10

Available: DVD

Posted by Matt