New Line Cinema, Platinum Dunes
Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Clancy Bron, Connie Britton, Lia D. Mortensen
It’s odd that this “remake” of Nightmare came out the same week as the “remake” of Karate (Kung Fu) Kid. Both have the same problem of a remake that probably didn’t need to be made. Of the two, this one fares a little better because in the horror genre it’s a generally creepy, scary film. But even though Wes Craven approved and blessed the remake, the new Freddy looks a whole lot different than the Robert Englund films, and you can’t help but notice that “That’s NOT Freddy”. They also changed the back story a bit which makes it confusing. It’s what they call a “re-imagining” to take away the stigma of “remake” from the project, but though there were changes to the backstory, basically it’s the same Freddy haunting poeple’s dreams and killing them in the dream makes them die in the real world. Nothing new or surprising there.
They changed the name of the heroine (Nancy Thompson who is now called Nancy Holbrook. The other characters are new, but follow the same type of mix of friends and classmates. I can’t fully recommend this film unless you’re a really big horror fan, or want to see a new way of seeing the original story. It falls into several traps. New CGI imagery looks like CGI, and somehow doesn’t add a lot to the presentation, and the saddest thing is that you know every twist and turn in the story already, so nothing is a surprise at all. Some re-imagines really work. One great one which comes to mind is “The Shining” where although extremely creepy and a great work on it’s own, the original “Jack Nicholson” feature film was not very true to the book, so it was redone as a mini-series for TV that almost came off as a whole new story. In this case, they tried to change everything, but in reality, it’s the same story as before, so not much was improved. And as a result, the new Freddy being so different from the old Freddy makes it uncomfortable.
So if this were a new storyline, or a different retelling of the story, it would have been an excellent job, but to redo the same movie without adding much is mostly ho-hum I’m afraid. So I can’t strongly recommend it, but as I said, if you’ve got a reason to want to see, then go right ahead, but if you’re looking for something new, just pass on this redo of the same thing.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Movie Review - A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) {R},
