A horror icon makes his return in an actually good remake!
Gyt here, and this time I’m bringing you a review of a film I’ve been anticipating for a while now - the re-make of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’.
Now be warned, there will be slight spoilers ahead, for both the original series and this film, as I compare the two.
Most will know the back-story, so I’ll summarize very shortly - Nightmare tells the story of a group of teenagers (most notably in this film, Nancy and Quinton) as they are plagued by nightmares. They soon realize that their nightmares are of the same burned man with a bladed glove, wearing a fedora and a Christmas sweater. Through research, they discover the origins of their tormenter - which I’ll have to get into later in this review, as it’s one of the biggest changes to the Freddy mythos.
I’ve long been a fan of the original series of films, though I’ll readily admit they’re corny as hell. Even the ones that are serious are corny in a way, due to their age. But there’s a certain charm to Freddy’s killings attitude and his humor that are really amusing, in a sick sort of way, but amusing none-the-less. So had they not done this film right, it was really going to annoy me, as well as a bunch of other fans. And there was ample room for error, especially with the re-casting of Freddy. No longer is the Springwood Slasher played by Robert Englund, as Jackie Earle Haley (better known for his role as Rorscache in ‘The Watchmen’) slips on the bladed glove.
So how did he do? Take it from a long-time fan of Englund, I don’t think anyone’s going to be disappointed by Haley’s work here. I will admit there’s a few parts early in where he sounds like he’s overacting a bit, or trying to hard to imitate Englund’s performance. But for the most part, he does his own thing while still honoring what the original actor did. He brings a nice nervous tic to Freddy that he never had before too - while he’s anticipating killing someone, he waggles his finger blades against themselves, reminding you of someone crossing knives against each other to carve a turkey.
The film as a whole is great in a similar vein - there’s lots of scenes, lines, and similarities that one can tie in to the original movie. A few longtime fan-favorite scenes that make a return are Freddy’s stretching through a wall, the dead girl in the body bag, and the glove coming out of the bath tub scene.
They also manage to perfectly balance the horror and the humor, unlike later films in the original franchise where things became way too corny. When they kept up playing the ‘We’ve taken out all of the humor’ card, I was afraid they were going to go too far, and take away what made Freddy great. Fortunately, that’s not the case, they’ve just returned him to his original balance.
Before I close, it’s time for me to cover the part that is going to cause the film to get some flack from long-time fans - in other words, MAJOR spoiler warning here.
They have altered Freddy’s back-story a bit in this film. Some of it is good and bad I’ll admit, but nothing to freak out over in my opinion, though I’m sure some die-hard fans are going to hate it regardless.
In the original, Freddy worked at a school as the janitor, in the boiler room, where he made his glove and sometimes killed the children. This time however, he is a gardener at a nursery school, and he never actually killed any children, though he did cut them. They don’t stop there however (and this is a change I approve of in a way) - originally Wes Craven (the creator of Freddy) wanted him to be a child molester and not just a killer, because that was the worst thing he could think of. At the time though, there was a rash of molestation cases in the news, and he didn’t want to press the issue and offend the families involved. They took the plunge all the way this time, and have him as a molester. This is all after tricking you for a while, making you think they were going to make Freddy have been innocent and wrongly killed - a change that would have been horrid and made me hate the film. I think they anticipated this, and that’s why they decide to mess with your head like that.
The film has already been getting some bad reviews, and I think the reason for that is because nobody appreciates an actually good horror film nowadays. When another great thriller like ‘Orphan’ gets bad reviews, and a gore-fest like ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ gets lots of love (though I will admit I haven’t seen either of those), then it’s easy to see that people aren’t in it for the actual scares anymore.
So overall, I was pretty happy with this film. In some ways, I like it better than the originals (probably a result of much higher production values), but in a lot of ways, I still prefer the old ones. Englund will always be the real Freddy to me even though Haley does an admirable job, but I look forward to where the new franchise goes at the same time. I can’t wait for this one to come out on DVD for me to re-watch either.
This is normally where I give what I just reviewed a number-based review, but this time I’d like to just leave you with my thoughts, as we’re doing something a little different here. You read my review, the thoughts of a long-time fan of this franchise. However, when I went to see this movie, my girlfriend was with me, and she’s never really seen a Freddy film before. She had an interesting idea of a double-review, one from a long-time fan and one from a new one, and so we’re going with that.
So be ready for her review coming soon. Until then, go see the movie yourself and let us know what you thought. Gyt, out.