I was actually looking forward to seeing the new Nightmare On Elm Street,
because, while the Wes Craven original is an unabashed classic, there were
elements of that film that always struck me as being very corny. The performances,
and some of the situations, seemed a bit overwrought, even back when I first saw
it in the theater. Also, I was eager to see Freddy Kruger, the nightmare man
himself, sashay across a new and impressive landscape that would be computer
generated. I guess I was setting the bar pretty high for this remake.
And while the new Nightmare is better than the original in some ways, such as
with its more understated, naturalistic acting (Rooney Mara is the perfect choice
to be the new Nancy), and the script feels tighter and self-assured, the remake
falls flat on its face when depicting the nightmare sequences. For one thing, the
filmmakers felt the strange need to reproduce some of the imagery from the
original film, such as Freddy poking his head through the wall of Nancy’s bedroom, and a scene when Nancy sees her dead friend in a body bag in the hallway of her school. I suppose the filmmakers felt obligated to recreate these scenes because they thought they were iconic.
But it really would have been nice if the special effects department were allowed to just cut loose in the nightmare sequences. On the DVD of Nightmare that I reviewed, there was a trailer for Inception, and this was a reminder of that masterpiece’s twisty-curvy dreamscapes and it’s theme of the very questioning of one’s reality. In contrast, the new Nightmare restricts itself too much to the point where it’s timid. When Freddy unleashes his nightmarish fury on these teens, we should be similarly wowed, just like we were in Inception. Yet instead of raising the bar and thinking outside of the box, the creators behind the remake seem content with standing in the shadow of the original.
Another problem, and it’s a big one, is Jackie Earl Haley, who plays Freddy this time out. I had no idea just how good Robert England, who played the original Freddy truly was until I saw Haley play the part here. Haley seems very flat and lackluster in his performance, even when delivering Freddy’s staple bon mots. Perhaps the same understated style which serves the everyday scenes so well here is too restricting for Freddy. Whatever the case may be, Haley lacks England’s grand, sadistic gleefulness--which served to make the character far more menacing. Here, the overall effect is Freddy Kruger coming off as being nothing more than just another bad dream. --SF
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