A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) (www.the-usher.com)

"Remember me?"

When the teenagers of Elm Street start to die in their sleep, Nancy (Mara) and Quentin (Gallner) start to question their own sanity. Neither of them is getting any sleep and both of them are having nightmares about the same thing. Every time they close their eyes they are tormented by a man with a striped jumper, a hideously burnt face and a glove with knives for fingers who wants to remember who he is. As the pair stay awake longer and longer and more and more teenagers die in horrific ways, they realise that their dreams might be memories from their childhood and a man called Freddy (Haley) might be out for revenge.

As Hollywood continues to run out of ideas for Horror movies, Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes production company return to the 80s to bring back an icon, Freddy Krueger.

For Horror fans, Hollywood is becoming a wasteland for good quality scares, gore and killings. If they are not producing endless torture horror sequels or remaking foreign hits, they are heading back to the glory days of the 70s and 80s to ‘re-imagine’ some of the great horror icons. Michael Bay and his production company Platinum Dunes have been the prime culprits over the last decade, bringing back ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, ‘The Amityville Horror’ and ‘Friday 13th’. Now it is the turn of a true horror icon, a Wes Craven classic who has become a cult figure who mixes terror with laughter, Freddy Krueger and ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’.

When Wes Craven released Freddy Krueger into everyone’s dreams in 1984 a true horror icon was born. Going onto grace six sequels, a TV series and a battle with Jason Voorhees. With his nursery rhyme “One, Two Freddy’s coming for you…” chilling you to the bone, the burnt figure wearing a hat, with the red and green striped jumper and a glove with knives for fingers entered our dreams and terrified and thrilled a generation. The question is however, even though he successfully returned with Jason in 2003, is it time to ‘re-imagine’ the Wes Craven classic or should they just leave Freddy in hell? The answer is yes and no.

As with all of the Platinum Dunes releases, the classic characters of American slasher horror are considered for a modern update but trying to keep within the boundaries of the original release. The remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ was still set in the 70s and ‘Friday 13th’ told some of the back-story but was really a modern day sequel. For ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ Michael Bay and director Samuel Bayer have set the story in modern times but it is the depiction of Freddy that has changed the most. The back-story is still there. Freddy Krueger is accused of been a pedophile by the residents of Elm Street and is chased to an abandoned factory where he is trapped inside while the building is set alight. Years later as the children of Elm Street are about to leave high school, they start having vivid nightmares about a man with knives for fingers. When one of them dies, the kids realise that if they die in their dreams they die in real life and Freddy is out for revenge. While this will sound familiar to all of the fans of the franchise, this is a very different Freddy from the original franchise.

There was something about Robert Englund’s performance as Freddy Krueger that rightly made him a cult figure in the horror genre. As well as haunting the dreams of many a horror fan, he also injected humour into the character, cutting down his victims with a well placed, corny pun as often as he used his finger blades. For this version however, Freddy has become a lot more sinister, evil and unforgiving. Relentless in his pursuit of his victims, he is vicious, unrelenting and a little more frightening. Jackie Earle Haley’s version is now a real boogeyman, someone who wouldn’t think of throwing in a pun or gag every now and again. For Freddy fans, this could be a disappointment, especially now that his burnt face has been enhanced by CGI but for those new to the franchise, they will be a little more frightened than if they watched some of the later sequels.

‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ is the best of the Platinum Dunes remakes but it is not a patch on the original. While it is believed that current movies audiences will not watch anything made before the turn of the millennium we will continue to see remake after remake but at least Michael Bay and his production company are trying to give it a much best try. “One, Two Freddy’s coming for you…” all over again.

Freddy Krueger Reborn featurette
Maximum Movie Mode (PiP)
Focus Points – Make-up Makes the Character, Micronaps, The Hat, Practical Fire, The Sweater, The Glove, The Victims
Deleted scenes – Hospital Opening, Nightmare Street, Alternate Ending

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2010