“Why are you screaming when I haven’t even cut you yet?” Freddy Krueger
My next movie up for review is A Nightmare on Elm Street the 2010 remake. Now as I said before on the subject of remakes they are hard to make and are held up to a higher standard. When it comes to remakes you can’t expect the exact same movie that was made in 1984. Before watching any remake I close my eyes and say this is a new movie and I won’t compare it. Try it sometime it’s hard to do and you have to forget the elements that made the first movie that made it a classic. So forget about Robert Englund and Wes Craven and enjoy this actually well made horror flick.
Overall I really enjoyed this movie that it really has good horror roots. Freddy terrorizes the teens and works them down to the point where they can’t resist going to sleep. The story works and has that hint of mystery with us wondering who Freddy was. I enjoyed it when Freddy was simply trying to scare them at first but not really trying to kill them. Freddy seemed more like a man trying to slowly cut down a tree and enjoying every chop. Even though I enjoyed watching Freddy doing this it didn’t make me root for Freddy it made me more worried about Nancy. How was she supposed to beat this seemingly invincible entity? I also thoroughly enjoyed the homages to the original series they did them well and with class. This movie went for the classic horror formula and played it well. Of course though people compared it too much to the original.
While doing a little research of this movie most of the reviews were very harsh while comparing it to the original. Of course if you compare this to the original the original wins every time without fail. The reason being is that the original is just that its the original and after 26 years of being in our minds that this was the first movie and anything that tries to be it is just wrong the remake didn’t have a chance. If you forget the past this movie is a good horror movie and in another life this could easily be a classic. Unfortunately all you can hear is Jackie Earl Haley is not Robert Englund. Of course he is not, but Haley wasn’t trying to be Robert Englund he was trying to play Freddy. I thought he did a very good job and was very brave for knowing that he would constantly hear that he wasn’t Robert Englund. I especially hated to read that this movie some people thought was the worst Freddy movie ever. Did any of them watch Freddy’s Revenge? If they did and they still say this movie was the worst I would stop talking to those people because they have no taste in movies. Maybe it would be easier for people if they just thought that the original movie was all just a well written dream?
This is all I got for this well done movie. I will continue my journey with the last movie in the nightmare franchise with Freddy Vs Jason. Yet another movie were a couple of monsters duke it out to see whose boss of the slasher genre. Until then this cinephile is out.
Sean O'Keefe 