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After hearing that director Samuel Bayer had snuck Robert Englund on the set to secretly watch Jackie Earl Haley filming as the new Freddy; and that Englund had surprised Haley at the end of the day, gushing about his spine chilling performance as the murderous undead burn victim, I admit that I had high hopes for some renewed chills and horror thrills. But I have admit that I didn't really get any when I got around to viewing this for the first time.
I bought a Blu-Ray edition to be the main feature in a Slasher Flick Friday Fright a few weeks back. The movie looked good, but the story sort of fell flat. OK, I did think that Haley's performance could have been seriously scary if the over all vehicle had been put forward as a darker view of the original canny Wes Craven film of 1984. I am not opposed to remakes out and out, like so many horror fans are. Some, like Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead in 1990 are really quite good. The problem that I had with this one was not that it was a remake of one of the all time classic horror movies; it was that it seemed like it didn't know what it wanted to be. On the one hand, it was trying to be a darker, more down and dirty horror film than the original; but on the other, there was a need to try to keep the campy wit of Freddy's speech, and somewhere in there, the two seemed to clash. I think that "somewhere" was in the performances the so-called teenagers caught up in Freddy's very vocal revenge. They just didn't seems genuinely scared enough the make for any real "wince factor," but they also weren't quirky either. One has to remember that the original "teenagers" (one of which was Johnny Depp), all had wildly different personalities, and it was really only Nancy Thompson (played by Heather Langenkamp) that was the really serious one. The new "teens" all seemed to meld together, with no real discernible difference between their reactions to Freddy in dreamtime.
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| Jackie Earl Haley |
So when Haley turns up with razor fingers and a gruff, no so funny, sarcasm, they all clash in some pedestrian way. I suppose it didn't help that Haley's voice as Freddy didn't sound all that different from his voice as Rorschach in The Watchmen, a performance that really sort of made the movie for me. Here that same voice is a distraction to the horror. You sort of keep thinking subconsciously that Walter Kovac's is going to show up in his ever evolving Rorschach mask, and when Freddy shows up instead, it's a bit of a let down. Of course, since most of the actors have proven that they are good in other roles, any flatness in performance has to lie at the door of the director and the two new script doctors.
On the look of the film, I also thought that quite a bit of the computer generated special effects shot over the mark of what was intended. Some of them are so over the top that they look kind of plastic and silly. They might be better off in a ride at a horror movie theme park. Come to think of it, that would make a pretty cool ride!
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hate the movie, I don't even out and out dislike it. I was a just disappointed. I will be keeping it though for future Horror viewing. Some of my reaction is my own fault for having such high expectations in the first place. Lowering those, it is a watchable enough horror flick.
A Nightmare On Elm Street 2010
Directed by: Samuel Bayer
Based on a New Screenplay by: Wesley Strick & Eric Heissener
Starring: Jackie Earl Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker & Kellan
Lutz
Running Time: 95 min.
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