I come not to bury Freddy, but to resurrect him.
Now, I’m not going to wholly defend the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street; it is far and away not a good film. But I am going to praise the impulse behind it.
Unlike many, I find 1984’s original Elm Street a flawed film, cursed with a weak lead and low re-watch value. It has a strong core, however, with fascinating thematic underpinnings and a great monster in Fred Krueger, that demon of the dreamscape. Yet as the series progressed (some entries more entertaining than the first, most much less so), Freddy devolved from nightmare creature to stand-up comedian (and we’re talking sub-Joe Piscopo stand-up here, not Patton Oswalt, although granted, a Piscopo dream-monster would be a terrifying thing).
Therefore, an attempt to actually make Freddy scary again is a welcome thing. And anchored by a strong performance by the always-great Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen), the remake had definite potential. Horror movies always have been able to transcend poor performances and weak scripts as long as they were actually scary. But any potential here was wasted in one crucial misstep: getting a first-time newbie to direct it.
Why anyone would trust a reboot of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated horror icons to an untested music video director is beyond me. While Spike Jonze and David Fincher may be exemplary filmmakers who started in video production, they are outliers. Samuel Bayer does not look to join their ranks, with a style that places him firmly in the Platinum Dunes pantheon of low-rent directors who mistake blood for scares, gore for tension, and blue filters for… actually, I don’t know what those replace. I just know I’m sick of them. (Marks also are subtracted for criminal misuse of its luminous and undeniably talented leading lady, Rooney Mara, that Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, who should take this movie off her CV.)
Didn’t Freddy deserve better? I put it to you, members of the jury, that his reputation can still be rehabilitated. Let’s look to some proven talents who know how to combine frights with pulp monsters. Let’s get Stuart Gordon involved or maybe Frank Darabont, Eli Roth or Ti West. James Wan seems to have possibilities lately. In my dreams, I can see a Krueger/Cronenberg marriage striking gold, and a David Lynch reimagining would likely become the most terrifying movie in the history of everything. —Corey Redekop