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Pointless and dire remake of Wes Craven's horror classic.
I’m tempted to leave this review at that but I guess I should elaborate further.
The original Nightmare is one of my favourite horror movies, and 80s films, but I am always open to a “reimagining”, especially when it involves characters as iconic as Freddy Krueger. Plus, I have really enjoyed certain horror remakes such as Dawn of the Dead and Texas Chainsaw so I went to this with quite a positive attitude.
And all I can say is that this particular film sums up all that is wrong within the horror genre today. The characters are bland. There is no tension. Gore is favoured over terror. And an iconic and frankly disturbing villain is turned into a paedophile.
Why on earth the writers felt they had to tap into that all-encompassing fear of men who work with children I don’t know – Oh! He likes kids. He must be a paedophile! Let’s burn him!
When Freddy was a full-on child murderer who actually used those knife-fingers and might have gotten a sexual thrill while doing it he was much scarier; much easier to fear. You never knew why he did what he did; only that he enjoyed it. Now, with the new back story and flash backs you’re instructed to only feel disgust towards him, not fear. And therein most of Freddy’s potency as the producer of nightmares is lost.
Team that up with a thoroughly mediocre performance from Jackie Earl Haley and such stiff makeup that it’s hard to read any expression on his face, and Freddy is rendered banal.
So, a crap villain, horrendous “young” actors who no one could care about, and nightmares that are not nightmarish. That was the other main bugbear – the nightmares just weren’t scary. The key to the original Freddy films is that you can imagine having nightmares like those Freddy produces. The long Freddy snake, the tongue that comes out of the phone, the dangling of a human as puppet using his veins – all truly nightmarish visions that you can imagine a twisted psyche and imagination creating. Endlessly running down a corridor or Freddy making you slit your own throat not nearly as scary.
And the main thing I really missed? That horrible screeching noise as he drags his claws across metal. Here he just gives off fireworks.
It’s inevitable that there will be a sequel which just deepens my despair of the contemporary horror viewing public. Do they not know there could be much better horror than this?
