Director: Samuel Bayer
Rating: 3 out of 10
Creative decision #1: The filmmakers decided not to include Wes Craven in their conversations about rebooting his original 1984 horror classic. And why would they include him? What has Craven ever done? Ooooooh right, he's responsible for Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, not to mention the only two decent sequels to the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. So, right out of the gate it's obvious these guys at Platinum Dunes weren't interested in making a good movie. They see $$$, acquire the rights to these classics, and push forward on production of these insanely bad remakes. Is it really impossible for someone else to make these movies if New Line was so interested in making some quick money? What about Michael Dougherty, the writer/director of Trick 'r' Treat? Offer it to him, at least he's talented! Shit, have an open contest for fans of the series to submit screenplays for a reboot. Without a doubt, they would have found something more intelligent than the script they spat up on the screen.
I think my hatred for this film grew to much larger proportions as I watched the mini "making of" deal after I watched the movie. The extra includes interviews with the cast and filmmakers, and boy do they come off as stupid. One of the filmmakers said they wanted to slowly reveal Freddy Krueger as the movie went along and not show everything up front. The original did this exceptionally well, you weren't really sure what Freddy looked like for at least 20 or 30 minutes. Well, in this one we get a dream sequence, the first kill, and a nice loving close-up of him inside of the first 4 minutes of the movie. Good job not blowing your load right away, guys. Strike 1! Next, I think it was one of the writers who was talking about how they had to create a backstory for Freddy because there wasn't much in the original series to go off. Meanwhile, as the real fans will tell you, his backstory is delved into in every movie in the series, especially part 1 and 3 (not coincidentally, both are Wes Craven contributions). They really only changed one thing from his original backstory: they made Freddy a child molester instead of a child murderer, which is pretty pointless. I don't see why they would change that, except to exploit some weird sexual tension between Freddy and Nancy whenever they're on screen, which just makes the filmmakers look creepier. Strike 2!!! And the final thing: the make-up. It's just a bad job by the make-up people. Now, I know they had to change the look a bit, especially considering they weren't bringing back Robert Englund to play his iconic creation, but his mouth doesn't even have a full range of motion, so it looks like an old Godzilla movie where the words don't match the lip movements. But the filmmakers reasoning behind the change was they wanted to bring a "realistic" look to Freddy, meanwhile part of the make-up is computer generated. They had to use green screen technology to add a hole in one of his cheeks. So much for realism. Oh and, also, guys, we're talking about a man who haunts and kills people in their dreams, can disappear and reappear anywhere, and can change forms into anyone he wants.....I'm afraid "realistic" is not in the equation. SSSStrrrrrriiiiike 3!!!!!
The funny thing is, I haven't even started on the actual movie. My main issue: the movie isn't scary. It's jump scare, after jump scare, after jump scare. Everytime Freddy shows up he pops out of nowhere. There's even a couple ocassions where he pops out of nowhere, has some banter with his victim, then disappears just so he can pop out of nowhere again. I couldn't believe it when I saw it, just lazy filmmaking. They also introduce us to the possibility of "micro-naps", which comes about after extreme sleep deprivation and enables the person to dream even when they're awake. But, do you know what it really does? It enables the "screenwriter" to have a dream occur anytime he wants because he's come up with this idiotic plot device that allows him to throw in a random shot of Freddy whenever he can't think of anything to write. I feel like there's a minimum of 15 dream sequences throughout the movie. A little overkill, guys. Even if "micro-naps" were possible, they fail to stick to the logic of it. The male lead sticks himself in the leg with a shot of adrenaline, which would surely liven you up, but then he proceeds to take a "micro-nap" a few minutes later. Huh?? You may notice that both "screenwriter" and "micro-nap" are in quotations, which is because I think both of them are a joke.
Did these guys really have to be put in charge of such a valuable commodity? I mean, New Line is only in existence because of the original Nightmare. It's even known in the industry as "The House that Freddy Built". So why would you piss all over that?
I was going to do this and the original film back-to-back, to have some fun and compare the two. Then I realized this film doesn't belong anywhere near the vastly superior original. Ugh....what a disappointment.
Next........
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