Film Reviews

A Nightmare On Elm Street

• Rating:
• Director: Samuel Bayer
• Starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy
• Details: US/94mins (16)

Wes Craven's 1984 horror classic is widely regarded as one of the most seminal moments in modern horror. Filled with countless metaphors and subtext, it's as smart as it is innovative and still stands up to repeat viewings more than 25 years after its initial release. This Platinum Dunes remake may be a lot shinier than the original, but it's completely devoid of soul, and easily the worst of the seemingly endless crop of remakes from Michael Bay's horror house. When remaking the likes of Amityville Horror, or Friday the 13th, filmmakers can naturally get away with a lot more. Those aforementioned productions may have had their moments, but they were far from classics, so comparisons to the original productions were hardly daunting. But even as a standalone horror film this remake is boring, nonsensical and full of the type of clichés that should have went out the door when Scream successfully rendered the genre self-aware in the mid-90s. A group of teenagers are being plagued by the same mysterious scarred man in their dreams. When their nightmares soon become very real and they start dying in their sleep, two of them set about getting to the bottom of it. They find stories of Freddy Krueger, a former gardener at their pre-school, who has come back from the dead to avenge his messy demise at the hands of their parents, and he's offing the youngsters in a place they can never run from - their nightmares. The casting of the (infinitely-better-than-this) Jackie Earl Hayley as Krueger is just about the only thing the filmmakers got right. The scares are obvious, the set pieces no better looking than the original, and the characters upgraded emo versions of their 1980s counterparts. Sure, it's a gorgeous looking film, but for one so well shot it's severely lacking in anything resembling atmosphere of any kind, never mind that of the foreboding. Director Bayer has essentially made a film that looks like it was put together to make a really cool trailer. Stretching out a series of money-shots into an hour and a half film was obviously too much for him, and the result is below par, even before you start with the comparisons to Craven's classic. Not quite Halloween bad, but muck nonetheless. Go buy the excellent original instead.

Review by Mike Sheridan