A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) Reviews

[WIL]

A Nightmare on Elm Street (Release Date April 30 2010)
Studio: New Line Cinema
Director: Samuel Bayer
Writer: Wesley Strick
Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Katie Cassidy, Connie Britton

Synopsis:

Freddy Krueger returns in A Nightmare on Elm Street, a contemporary re-imagining of the horror classic. A group of surburban teenagers share one common bond: they are all being stalked by Freddy Krueger, a horribly disfigured killer who hunts them in their dreams. As long as they stay awake, they can protect one another…but when they sleep, there is no escape.

[WIL]

CLICK HERE FOR A COLLECTION OF QUOTES AND REVIEWS FROM ALL OVER THE INTERWEBS!

[El_Brando_37]

Wow, I don't get all these negative reviews. I actually enjoyed it. I caught it and the original in a back to back showing at the drive-in. Here's my review of it.

First off, let me start by saying that I'm a huge fan of the original. It's one of my top ten favorite movies. So of course, when the remake was first announced, I was fairly confident that it was going to be a giant mess. The shooting script that came out about five or six months ago didn't quell my fears any. However, I decided to reserve my judgment until I actually seen the movie and give it the same chance I do with any movie. Now onto the review...

Remember when Freddy used to be dark and sinister? You know, when he was an evil demented being that would occupy your nightmares as opposed to the disgruntled bastard child of Bugs Bunny he became in the later sequels? Yeah, that Freddy's back. Jackie Earle Haley had some pretty big shoes to fill in the eyes of many a "Nightmare on Elm Street" fans, and I got to say, he filled them quite well. At least in this fan's eyes. Do you picture Rorschach when he talks? Yes. But that's inevitable, and it left my mind after about the second time he appeared. And while I'm on talking, Freddy actually delivers a few great lines throughout the movie that aren't recycled from previous Nightmare installments and come of as threatening rather than stand-up material.

The look of Freddy is well done (lame pun intended), he looks pretty much just like a burn victim which all adds to his general creepy factor. On the negative side, I do feel like classic Freddy had more range of emotion. The new make-up seemed to be a bit tight, but that could also be considered more realistic to an actual burn victim.

While I prefer Heather Langenkamp's Nancy to Rooney Mara's Nancy, Rooney really didn't do a bad job. I think it's just a matter of personal preference. I'm glad they brought Nancy back however as she is just as big of a part of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" legacy as Krueger is. As far as the other cast, they were all alright. None of them really stood out as amazing, but they got the job done.

Plot wise, I was pleasantly surprised that they made changes to the script that was floating around the internet several months ago. Quite a bit of annoying things in the script have been scraped such as the dream world map, Quentin having his own pod cast show that Nancy obsesses over, and the party opening (although the death featured in that scene might have been a bit cooler than the one they ended up using). I was also very pleased that they didn't recycle too much from the original. They only recycle one death scene and maybe about three iconic scenes from the original; and those scenes play out differently. Speaking of kills, there aren't many, just like in the original. Also like the original, they are mostly straightforward and brutal after a bit of playing around from Freddy.

Freddy's back story is slightly changed in the remake, which to me is an improvement. It actually gives more of a plausible reasoning behind why Freddy is going after the kids and why he doesn't show up until they are teenagers. Another plus was the micro nap concept and the sleep coma that follows after a long period of sleeplessness. It gave a sense of urgency to Nancy and company's plight, where they actually have a time limit in which to discover why Freddy is after them and how to stop him.

I had a good time watching this movie. Was it better than the original? Not to me. Was it better than the last couple of sequels in the franchise. A million times, yes. However, despite this fact, you'll still get people whining that this is the film that destroyed Freddy Krueger. Forgetting the fact that "Freddy's Dead" exists. I don't care what anyone says, "Freddy's Dead" is a fucking shity movie and if it didn't kill Freddy the second it was brought to the screen, this remake sure as hell won't. They played the original before the midnight showing of the remake which gave me the opportunity to compare the two. Both are good films, both are their own separate entities and they didn't even burn the reel to the original after the remake was over or anything!

TL;DR Version:

I went into the movie with expectations of meh and came out pleasantly surprised. Not as good as the original, but way better than anything following "Dream Warriors".

7.5/10

[WIL]

55% of the votes are for "great" on the Elm Street site http://nightmareonelmstreetmovie.com/rate-nightmare-elm-street-2010

It is still early though!

[son of brain hammer]

Well, that proves that the majority of Elm Street fans are retarded - because this movie is a giant piece of shit.

Review coming soon!!!

[WIL]

Awesome we need one bad!

[JBirdman13]

This was a stinker. I guess after this goes to the fan section of my website I'mma have to clean it.

[El_Brando_37]

Hammer's review on Gamefaqs made me realize I made a bit of mistake in my review. Two deaths are actually recycled. Having some time to actually evaluate the flick, I'd actually drop it down to a solid 7. I still don't think it was a complete pile of shit, there was a pretty decent flick underneath the lazy deaths and the Quentin character.

It'll be interesting to see how the inevitable sequel plays out. I hope Jackie Earle Haley reprises the role.

[JBirdman13]

I heard he signed like a 3 picture deal so let's pray I'm right. He was one of the only things I liked. PD basically dumb down this one too much for me and as a die-hard Freddy fan, I couldn't stand it. It felt like a Nightmare movie, but it the back of my mind, I kept being reminded on screen that it wasn't.

Atleast my copy of the Never Sleep Again documentary is in the mail. I'm gonna dig that shit up.

[JBirdman13]

Plot: Don't play stupid. It's a remake of the 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's pretty much the same story with some changed names and new "creative" twists from those douchebags at Platinum Dunes. Nancy and friends are stalked by a strange misfigured man but don't know why.
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My Thoughts: Well. So much for thinking that I might enjoy this one. Welcome back to the Freddy-Thon where I'm here to present Nightmare fans with bad news. This film sucks. So now after wasting two hours in a boiling hot movie theater surrounded by loud assholes, I'm forced to go back to the Fan section of my reviews (and oh boy did this movie hit the fan.).

Many of you reading this will be gravely disappointed to hear that if you watched all of the trailers, like me, then you will find this movie to be long, tedious, and drug out. The shit that was shown in the trailers was pretty much the whole movie. This is another case, just like 2003's When a Stranger Calls, where the trailers ruined too much of the movie (Atleast the climax of this movie managed to stay intact.)

Now, as a true Nightmare on Elm Street fan through and through, I will say that this did feel like a Nightmare flick. This is perhaps due to Jackie Earle Haley giving arguably his best performance to date. Watching him being a mean S.O.B. while still giving funny and sdisturbing one-liners was actually pretty entertaining. I do wish though that someone else would have actually realized that they are supposed to be acting and now just showing their "gusied up", "teen heartbeat" faces. And it pains me to say, that while it's usually one of the outrageously pretty people who is the worst actor, Connie Britton steals the infamy in her role as Nancy's mother.

While we are on the topic of people's mothers, Nancy has no father figure in this movie. In fact, whenever I saw someone who had a parent, the parent seemingly had no spouse or partner. What the fuck is this? An ad for a dating service? Removing Nancy's father from the picture is like taking the backbone of a human. In the original movie, Nancy's father was there for here in the end. He was the one person who would help her when the others failed or didn't believe her. He was a pivotal character in the series and I'm sure that John Saxon is somewhere tossing and turning in his sleep since his character was scrapped so tastelessly.

The story is a decent one. Like I said, it's basically the same as the original. I know what some of you are probably wondering, "If it's the same then doesn't that mean it's great?" No. Everything that they added seemed to sucked the soul out of the original idea. For example, they don't really focus on Nancy that much in the first thirty or so minutes. Instead they focus on Kris, a.k.a Tina's replacement. This could be very confusing for new viewers who have never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street film before. And nobody even get me started on the "micro" naps bullshit. That was easily the dumbest way I've ever seen a movie try to explain something. It felt as though the guys at Platinum Dunes didn't feel like anyone can comprehend an idea unless they explain it to you. It's like if you didn't want to eat a certain food but some asshole keeps shoveling the shit into you're mouth.

The kills are not very good either (They even basically reused Tina's death for Kris). They are good ideas for kills but they are presented horribly with crappy CGI. Actually, everything in the movie seemed tainted by CGI. The re-shot "rubber" wall bit based of the original, the blood, the fire, hell I think even Freddy's face was messed up too with CGI "touch-ups". This was even more disappointing since I didn't mind Freddy's new make-up until they started messing around on their computers.

I'm also dreadful to say that the ending was bad like the rest of the movie. The way Freddy "died" was fucking pathetic. And right before he gets his, one of the worst alluding quotes comes out of Nancy's mouth that made me want to hang myself. What does she say? Well she quote's Lori from Freddy vs Jason. You probably can already guess what it is she says so I'm just going to leave it at that.

So let's tally that up. One recycled script, some bad CGI, pointlessly pretty actors and actresses for teens to masterbate to, stupid "new" background information, Nancy's mom is a shitty actress, the "twists" are stupid, and there is a bad ending. Subtract that from ten and you get all of the points this movie got from Haley alone.
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Verdict: 3/10. One...Two... Thanks for the money.

[Johnny Truant]

I'm going to go see this week after next sometime.  I have a free ticket but I can't use it on a new release.  I want to see this one but I can't in good conscience spend money on it.

It -IS- Platinum Dunes, after all.

[WIL]

Rate it here for me too guys! 55% says its great! http://nightmareonelmstreetmovie.com/rate-nightmare-elm-street-2010

[Johnny Truant]

In the shot where he's silhouetted in the boiler room, I keep thinking he's Bubba Ho-Tep.

[Andrew]

WHOA... wait a second.  There's a remake of Nightmare on Elm Street?

[WIL]

Burning through one of the most front-loaded opening weekends on record, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) boiled atop the box office with an estimated $32.2 million on approximately 4,700 screens at 3,332 sites. Beneath Freddy's latest resurrection, Furry Vengeance got razed in its debut, but the holdovers couldn't pick up enough slack for an up weekend: overall business was down around 11 percent from the late April weekend last year.

The Nightmare on Elm Street remake saw greater initial attendance than Halloween (2007), and it was a personal best for Freddy Krueger in a solo outing. It even out-grossed the entire runs of the first, second, fifth and seventh Nightmare movies (albeit not in terms of tickets sold). The debut was also a new horror high for either April or May, surpassing The Amityville Horror (2005), and it ranked seventh overall for the month of April.

The new Nightmare, though, delivered a lower opening body count than Friday the 13th (2009), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Freddy Vs. Jason. The Friday the 13th remake, which was from the same producer as Nightmare (Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes banner), nabbed $40.6 million on its first weekend and rapidly bled out to a $65 million final.

Friday accounted for nearly 48 percent of Friday the 13th's weekend gross, but Nightmare had an even greater Friday cut: it made $15.8 million or over 49 percent of its weekend on Friday alone, ranking fifth on the all time list of most Friday-loaded first weekends, behind only Saw VI, the Twilight movies and Hannah Montana The Movie. Further indicating the rabidity of Freddy's followers, the picture boasted the horror midnight opening record with $1.6 million at 1,000 sites.