One, two, Freddy’s coming for you
Three, four, better lock the door.
Five, six, grab your crucifix.
Seven, eight, better stay up late.
Nine, ten, never sleep again.
It’s been seven years since 2003’s Freddy VS Jason and fans have been clamoring for the return of Robert Englund and Freddy. Now in 2010 the Maniacal Dreamweaver is back to reek vengeance on Elm Street. But how does this new film, and the new Freddy, stack up to the original? Very well, I’d say.
While I won’t delve into the finer points of the plot of this movie a brief summary would be described as such:
A young man, Dean, dies after seemingly committing suicide in a café. A friend witnesses his death and hears him exclaim “You’re not real!” before the boy seemingly slits his own throat with a knife. At the funeral, the girl who saw Dean’s death, Kris, sees a photograph of herself with Dean, but wonders how that could be considering the group of “friends” never met each other until high school. As the film progresses two other teenagers, Nancy and Quentin, discover that their friends all went to the same preschool as themselves, a fact that all their parents continually deny and hide; resorting to taking entire pieces of their lives out of scrap books and hiding documents and facts from their children. The two discover that all of their friends have the same dreams involving a preschool and a burned man with a fedora and glove calling himself Freddy. It is only after confronting Nancy’s mother and Quentin’s near death by drowning that the two discover who Freddy was; a gardener at the preschool who considered the children, particularly Nancy, his entire world. The parents, seeking vengeance for the pain and molestation Freddy caused the children after taking him to his “magic cave” in the basement of the preschool, hunt down Freddy and burn him alive. Nancy’s mother lies, claiming that Freddy skipped town before any justice could be done, while Quintin’s father states that as far as the town is concerned, the man named Freddy Krueger never even existed. Suffering from insomnia and beginning to suffer from micro-naps (where the body tries to compensate for lack of sleep by blurring the lines between dream and reality, making a person fall asleep without even realizing that they’ve done so) the two travel to the preschool in order to find out the truth about what Freddy really did to them. Both fall asleep and eventually end up luring Freddy into the real world, where they believe they’ve dealt with him. But as the end of the movie shows…the nightmare is only just beginning.
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Announcing Freddy Krueger as the new spokesperson for Roto-Rooter!-Nancy (Rooney Mara)Now this review is coming from someone with almost no knowledge of the original film series, but I’d say this film is equally as good as the originals. Jackie Earle Haley made a bold move in taking over the hat, sweater, and glove of Englund but in my opinion made the character much more real and creepy. His voice is rough, something Haley grabbed from Englund’s portrayal, but the inflections used almost sound like the man had been burned alive rather than like he’d just gargled a bunch of gravel. Haley does make the character his own, including nervous tics such as the scraping of two of his claws together every time he anticipates a kill.
Critics claim the film is far too gory, comparing it to the Saw films and Hostel. My reaction to these statements is…"Are we even watching the same film?" Yes, this version of NoES is rated “R” for a reason, it has gore and extreme violence but said violence is nothing like the fetishism that new horror fans of Saw, Hostel, and The Hitcher are used to. Throats may be slit and blood may have splattered but people were not choked by their own intestines nor were they packed with three people’s worth of blood. The slasher bits were, in my honest opinion, well handled and not overly done considering the horror territory that this film could have strayed into with the dream sequences. Critics also claimed that JEH’s portrayal is far too varied, changing from perverted, to sadistic, to funny far too fast. While I may not have much knowledge of the original films I do know that the first film is much like this one: far more serious with dark humor spread throughout but nothing like the humor in movies 2-8 (the Nintendo Powerglove comes to mind). This film may be dark but it doesn’t lack the dark humor of the originals. Lines from Freddy’s comment to Quentin of “Why won’t you fucking die!?” to Freddy’s hilariously offhanded “Be right back…” (I need an icon of that, guys…seriously.) mix it up with jokes and dark humor but never make the film campy or cheesy the way the originals did. This Freddy is tenacious; never giving up until his prey is cornered and killed. “We still have six minutes left.” as Freddy tells Jesse while the poor guy hangs upside down in the dreamland boiler room with a gaping, bleeding hole in his gut as he gasps for breath before dying in his prison cell a few minutes later.
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*Sigh* Let's try it again. You sleep and then I kill you, if you don't get that after 9 films then I give up.-Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley)
Most fans complained about the makeup but really, if you think about it, comparing the Englund makeup from any of the original films and you’ll see that it looks more like melted plastic than the skin of a burn victim. The makers of the new film actually used pictures of burn victims and victims of the blasts at Nagasaki and Hiroshima (with the severe burn footage there) as the basis for their realistic makeup. Screenshots simply never do the makeup justice. The trailers and promotional images and posters made the makeup look wonky, but seen in action, the makeup can truly live up to the grotesque images one can imagine from a man having been burned to death. The muscle, sinew, and bone are clearly visible under the ragged, half hazard hanging skin clinging to Freddy’s cheeks and while the makeup was all practical, some CGI touch up was done to show that there is no skin and very little muscle still attached to his cheek bones; giving his face a much more realistic and creepy factor than the makeup of old, reminiscent of a skull rather than just melted goo put on someone’s face. Haley spent a grueling three hours and twenty minutes having the makeup applied to his face and body before each day of filming. “They gave me these oversized contacts” Haley’s stated in one interview about the film, “They itched and make it hard for me to see, but really get me in the mindset of Fred along with the makeup job. It’s amazing to see myself transform over a period of a few hours…”
A lot of critics and fans also complained about never getting a full on shot of JEH in makeup (which we DO get as the film goes on) but most don’t seem to remember that movie goers didn’t really get a good look at Freddy’s scarred face until movie 2. Many were annoyed at how little screen time Freddy gets in the first and second half of the film. Actually, the original also used Freddy kind of sparingly. The true source of the terror was the teens’ reactions to what was going on. To see them clueless, hysterical and horribly sleep deprived is pretty darn chilling. Freddy is just the icing on that epic horror cake.
No matter what they say, much like with Transformers 2, many fans actually liked this new Nightmare on Elm Street. Critics and the more critical fans are constantly comparing this to the original far more silly and cheese filled films without realizing that, as the opening credits clearly say, this is “Based on characters created by Wes Craven” this is an effective, and enjoyable introduction to the character that made everyone scared to fall asleep. I don’t think making $50 million plus in the US and around $74 million plus worldwide can be considered a failure do you? To all those people who want to compare this movie to another film I think Freddy says it best:
“You think you can turn back time? You think you can BRING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE?”
Well…do you? Stop comparing the film to the originals and take it more as the fresh take for a new generation of horror lovers rather than something to appeal strictly to the old hats. This isn’t your father’s Freddy…deal with it. Englund himself has even stated that he liked JEH as Freddy, believing him to be the perfect fit for the role. And no, as the critics falsely claim, JEH’s voice was not digitally deepened or enhanced; Jackie did the vocal “effects” himself similar to what he did in Watchman.
Overall, I give the movie a 4/5. While it could have been a tad longer, I can understand why they cut out a few scenes shown in the trailers (Freddy cutting off his fingers digit by digit while giggling maniacally as one example) but I hope these and other scenes are featured on the DVD.
I know for a fact that this will be one of my first Blu-ray purchases, (as I only have 2 other DVDs in Blu-ray) and I can’t wait to have the DVD in my hands in a few months.
I’m going to bed, so here’s hoping Freddy doesn’t visit me in my dreams, though I’d be perfectly willing to let JEH do so. *laughs*