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

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“What the hell is a Tenkiller?” asks everyone unfamiliar with the state lakes of Oklahoma. Yet one must admit the alliteration of the title Terror at Tenkiller is catchy, and few words sound as ideal a setting for a slasher movie — a thought shared by the thought-challenged college girl at this film’s well-intentioned heart.

Because the busty Leslie (Stacey Logan, in her only credit) is having troubles with her abusive boyfriend, her BFF Janna (Michelle Merchant, ditto) takes Les for some R&R at her family’s cabin at Lake Tenkiller (located seven miles from the appropriately named town of Gore, incidentally). There, they can swim, boat, fish, ski and talk to a redneck in a Beech-Nut cap and dubbed voice.

They also can get in some exercise by fleeing the resident killer, Tor (Michael Shamus Wiles, TV’s Breaking Bad), who plays the harmonica. (Speaking of music, the score is dominated by a cue that sounds like the Casio was unplugged abruptly each and every time.) Even if the murderer’s identity weren’t revealed in the prologue, the character’s name alone would give it away — well, that and the fact that Terror is nearly a three-character piece.

One of the earliest made-for-VHS horror films, Terror at Tenkiller is another low-budget wonder from the Blood Cult gang, this one directed by first-timer (and last-timer, in keeping with the majority of the cast) Ken Meyer. I’m guessing he shot it out of sequence, since Janna’s first bikini top is quite filled out by fake breasts, which subsequent scenes reveal as all but deflated. Strangely, that adds to its charm — free of varnish, but entertaining. —Rod Lott

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I’m totally paraphrasing, but the worried and protective dad played by Sean Bean (TV’s Game of Thrones) firmly and completely warns his teen daughter, Heather (Adelaide Clemens, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), “Do not to go to Silent Hill. Never, ever. No matter what occurs, no matter what happens. Dammit, girl, don’t go there. Got it? Don’t. And don’tcha even think it!”

So of course she goes there. I get it; otherwise, Silent Hill: Revelation would be a short. And maybe it should have been.

2006’s Silent Hill is one of the better big-screen adaptations of a video game, mostly because director Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf) bathed the creeps in ambience, and let mood do most of the legwork. In this belated sequel, writer/director Michael J. Bassett (Solomon Kane) tries to tell a story about the foggy, ash-snowing town’s inhabitants and their shadowy Order of Valtiel.

However, this is all convoluted to a point of making the audience not care. If it makes total sense to you, I suspect you’re a serious student of the games, in which case will you please put down the controller and take a shower? Your mother’s asked you three times already!

Clemens, a Michelle Williams doppelgänger, walks through the movie with her mouth agape in perpetual shock as she encounters the franchise’s various iconic creatures, which look like a mixture of Clive Barker’s Cenobites, recovering plastic-surgery patients and diagrams from your geometry textbook. Bassett introduces some new ones, ranging from a spider composed of mannequin parts to a tapioca-complected Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix trilogy) as the cult’s leader.

Neither Moss nor Clemens were in the first film. That was fronted by Radha Mitchell (The Crazies), who shows up just long enough for a cameo in a mirror. At least someone was wise enough to heed Bean’s advice. —Rod Lott

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It seems appropriate that what ultimately saves this obscure late-’70s proto-slasher is a memorably theatrical performance by T.G. Finkbinder as the title character. That’s right: The Redeemer redeems The Redeemer, but it’s a close call, because one-time director Constantine S. Gochis commits more than his fair share of cinematic sin before the end credits roll.

In a plot that predates the similar Slaughter High by eight years, six assholes are tricked into attending their 10-year high school reunion, only to discover that they have actually been gathered to be fatally punished for their supposed sins against humanity: specifically, their avarice, vanity, gluttony, haughtiness, licentiousness and perversion.

Unfortunately, as written, the victims are all so clearly guilty of their “sins,” it’s hard not to assume the filmmakers are on the killer’s side, which is especially disturbing when you consider that the “pervert” The Redeemer punishes is simply a woman in a normal (albeit clandestine) lesbian relationship.

But what confuses the potentially ugly moral stance is the revelation that the killer is actually a priest working as the personal hand of the subtitular Son of Satan. What are we supposed to make of this? Is organized religion really a front for the devil? Is the idea that the victims’ supposed “sins” are so minor and commonplace that any one of us could find ourselves at the mercy of The Redeemer? And why is the adolescent Antichrist busy punishing earthly sinners, instead of encouraging them like a more typical Antichrist would?

Thinking about it all makes my head hurt, but — as mentioned above — the movie’s confused themes are made bearable by the presence of its antagonist, who manages to walk that fine line between campy fun and genuine creepiness. Both ahead of its time and unfortunately retrograde, The Redeemer is a highly flawed, but interesting film that deserves a place in the slasher canon its obscurity heretofore has denied it. —Allan Mott

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A belated sequel to 1994’s hit Interview with the Vampire, the flop follow-up Queen of the Damned is, to me, the more enjoyable work, because it doesn’t try to be an important, arty film like Neil Jordan’s laborious adaptation. Recognizing the source novels of Anne Rice as purely B-level material — Jane Austen she ain’t — Queen sets out to be nothing more than a B movie.

Stuart Townsend (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen‘s Dorian Gray) takes over for Tom Cruise in the role of Lestat, the ancient vampire who has now become a rock star, singing terrible death-metal songs (penned by Jonathan Davis, the guy behind the terrible nu-metal band Korn). By informing his fans of his bloodsucking status, Lestat has raised the ire of the vampire nation, which seeks to silence him permanently. In making his evil music, he’s also raised the titular queen (R&B singer Aaliyah, who eerily perished in a plane crash before the film’s release) from the dead, and she wants to extinguish the human race.

Queen is more campy than anything, especially with the majority of vampire action given silly ghost-trail effects that cheapen the film. The direction by Michael Rymer (In Too Deep) is flashy and showy, befitting of the piffling material, which grows confusing as it heads toward Act 3. But with bloody bosoms and combustible corpses, who’s expecting Shakespeare?

The end seems to be a direct setup for another sequel, unlikely to surface given this chapter’s tepid reception. —Rod Lott

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