A Nightmare on Elm Street

Director: Samuel Bayer
Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Kellan Lutz, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Kyle Gallner and Rooney Mara
Releasing in cinemas: 20 May 2010
Rated: MA 15+

I wonder why we are blessed with so many remakes of the stock horror movies - Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, etc. - in the early 21st. century. Perhaps it’s a sign of paucity in new scripts. It’s a long time since the original A Nightmare on Elm Street graced the screens, but with so many further episodes of Freddie Krueger’s activities with his lethal finger blades, the story’s well worn. There’s a precedent - an impressive 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Frederick March in the featured role of the demonized doctor, was remade again scarcely ten years later with a star cast headed by Spencer Tracey.

Perhaps there’s some point in providing an updated Elm Street for today’s more ‘sophisticated’ audiences, although at times one has to wonder. The new film starts by breaking fresh ground, and indeed the back story of Mr. Krueger has been expanded considerably. However we’re soon into a re-run of the original plot, with many key scenes rehashed with embellishments largely due to CGI techniques.

Two major differences - Freddie’s pedophile tendencies are clearly spelt out (presumably this is more acceptable to today’s audience); and with sleep deprivation being a major concern of the haunted teenagers, we have instant micro-naps when Freddie can reappear for seconds and give them a nasty turn.

The group of teenagers, Dean (Kellan Lutz), Kris (Katie Cassidy), Jesse (Thomas Dekker), Quentin (Kyle Gallner) and Nancy (Rooney Mara) all share deadly nightmares centered around the striped-sweater-wearing man with a disfigured face and claws of steel. “When he kills you in your sleep you stay dead” is the key line; meaning what happens in nightmares doesn’t always stay in nightmares. You can be slaughtered in your dreams and meet the same fate in the real world.

Years earlier, Freddie Krueger a pre-school caretaker, is accused of molesting children (perhaps unjustly). Their distraught parents are led in a witch hunt by vigilante-minded Alan Smith (Clancy Brown). Krueger’s trapped in a burning building. Now he’s back looking for revenge from the dream world (the Everly Brother’s ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ is his cheerfully ironic theme song). The film continues with the man in the hat hunting down his victims against hellish backgrounds. You know the rest and even the last shock is predictable.

Wes Craven’s low-budget 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street has become a cult classic, establishing Robert Englund’s somewhat limited career as the iconic Krueger, and introducing a young Johnny Depp to the screen. It was innovative in combining the bloodiness of slasher flicks with a nightmarish figures of dreams. Clever in-studio special effects had you wondering how they were achieved, like the gravity-defying sequence orbiting a fake room around a stationary camera. Today we have a more flamboyant version of the same scene with digital effects souping it up; but you know it’s computer-generated so there’s no wonder anymore. That’s partially why the remake has little of the impact of the original. The new darker Freddie as played by Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) takes life seriously, lacking those wisecrack one-liners which helped Englund provide a sickly entertaining ghoul.

Direction by music-video king Samuel Bayer fails to achieve the most frightening moments of Craven’s film. The doomed teenagers are played by actors gathered largely from TV and make little impression - there’s no Johnny Depp heir-apparent. Carnivale fans may however remember Clancy Brown as the evil preacher.

Film buffs will see references to Carrie, The Shining, The Exorcist, and even a glimpse of Steven King’s It. In line with many Michael Bay produced films, the soundtrack works overtime, with loud crashes and jump cuts providing the usual shock treatment but they soon become tedious under Bayer’s tardy direction. I'm sure there's a new audience who could find revisiting Elm Street a modestly scary experience, yet getting the Craven version on DVD will prove more rewarding.

John Bale