Review of "A Nightmare on Elm Street"
The Detroit News
'A Nightmare on Elm Street" may be the most unneeded movie of the year. And that's saying something.
Not that it's outright bad. Veteran video director Samuel Bayer has delivered a perfectly serviceable, if somewhat more serious and less campy, remake of the slasher classic.
But let's get real here. Between 1984 and 1991 there were six "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, eventually augmented by two TV series and the mash-up "Freddy vs. Jason."
Did we really need to see this story again? Especially since it adds nothing new to the canon?
Yes, "Hamlet" has been done a million times, so why not Freddy Krueger?
Simply put, Freddy is no Hamlet. Six times was more than enough.
But here Freddy is, with Jackie Earle Haley taking on the role made famous by Robert Englund (who, at 62, was probably a bit long in the fang for a comeback).
The story is the same. Freddy starts appearing in the nightmares of a group of seemingly unrelated teens, and in those nightmares he guts and slices them to death with his unique razor fingers, at which point they die in real life.
As it turns out, Freddy was a child molester who terrorized a pre-school before the parents burned him to death. Now he's back to kill all the kids.
Why he waits until the kids are teenagers probably has more to do with potential bathing sequences than any actual logic. Happily, we haven't yet gotten to the point where 8-year-olds are disemboweled in slasher films.
Anyway, the last two teens, Quentin (Kyle Gallner from "Jennifer's Body") and Nancy (Rooney Mara, "Youth in Revolt"), realize if they stay awake they can't be killed. So they promptly begin taking turns nodding off.
Much mayhem, blood and scraping of razor fingers along rusty pipes and blackboards ensues.
One has to wonder with alarm at the psyche of Jackie Earle Haley. Once a child star ("Bad News Bears"), Haley disappeared for decades only to return as a pervert in "Little Children," a sociopathic superhero in "Watchmen," and now this. Here's hoping his self-esteem classes are working.
But Haley is actually a bit more frightening than was Englund, a reality that may well chafe diehard "Nightmare" fans who long for the old monster's wisecracks.
Speaking of monsters, the scariest people in the theater were the couple who brought a child of 3 or 4 to see this movie. They may as well have enrolled the poor kid in Future Serial Killers of America.
Hopefully they won't be bringing the poor kid to a sequel in two years.
'A Nightmare on Elm Street" may be the most unneeded movie of the year. And that's saying something.
Not that it's outright bad. Veteran video director Samuel Bayer has delivered a perfectly serviceable, if somewhat more serious and less campy, remake of the slasher classic.
But let's get real here. Between 1984 and 1991 there were six "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, eventually augmented by two TV series and the mash-up "Freddy vs. Jason."
Did we really need to see this story again? Especially since it adds nothing new to the canon?
Yes, "Hamlet" has been done a million times, so why not Freddy Krueger?
Simply put, Freddy is no Hamlet. Six times was more than enough.
But here Freddy is, with Jackie Earle Haley taking on the role made famous by Robert Englund (who, at 62, was probably a bit long in the fang for a comeback).
The story is the same. Freddy starts appearing in the nightmares of a group of seemingly unrelated teens, and in those nightmares he guts and slices them to death with his unique razor fingers, at which point they die in real life.
As it turns out, Freddy was a child molester who terrorized a pre-school before the parents burned him to death. Now he's back to kill all the kids.
Why he waits until the kids are teenagers probably has more to do with potential bathing sequences than any actual logic. Happily, we haven't yet gotten to the point where 8-year-olds are disemboweled in slasher films.
Anyway, the last two teens, Quentin (Kyle Gallner from "Jennifer's Body") and Nancy (Rooney Mara, "Youth in Revolt"), realize if they stay awake they can't be killed. So they promptly begin taking turns nodding off.
Much mayhem, blood and scraping of razor fingers along rusty pipes and blackboards ensues.
One has to wonder with alarm at the psyche of Jackie Earle Haley. Once a child star ("Bad News Bears"), Haley disappeared for decades only to return as a pervert in "Little Children," a sociopathic superhero in "Watchmen," and now this. Here's hoping his self-esteem classes are working.
But Haley is actually a bit more frightening than was Englund, a reality that may well chafe diehard "Nightmare" fans who long for the old monster's wisecracks.
Speaking of monsters, the scariest people in the theater were the couple who brought a child of 3 or 4 to see this movie. They may as well have enrolled the poor kid in Future Serial Killers of America.
Hopefully they won't be bringing the poor kid to a sequel in two years.
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