Oh NoES

Below is my very long, spoiler filled review of Nightmare on Elm Street 2010:

I don't know why so many horror movies are being remade right now.  It boggles the mind.  I can only assume that the film industry assumes horror is a genre only teenagers are interested in and that thus, any movie more than 15 years old is worth remaking because it will be new to the target audience.  I have to assume this because the only other assumption I can make is that they think fans of the genre are stupid, or that we have no emotional attachment to the original movies, or that these movies aren't to be viewed as art and therefore can be plundered and glossed over with CGI and sets from IKEA and millions of dollars and that will automatically improve upon the source material.  It is because of these assumptions on my part that I can only be insulted by remakes of horror movies and never impressed or excited.  How can I be when it only demonstrates to me that the creators of these abominations hold me in such low esteem?

But then I am the one paying to watch them so I suppose I only have myself to blame in the end.

Let's get one thing out of the way right here at the jump off: Freddy Krueger has always been a pedophile.  If you weren't paying close attention to these movies, or you only watched them once a long time ago and cannot remember the details it might make sense that you would think Freddy was "turned into" a pedophile for the 2010 remake of Nightmare on Elm Street (NoES).  While the original movies called him a "child murderer" and left his pedophilia merely suggested, this was mostly because of some high profile child molestation cases that were in the news in California at the time of the first film's release.  Craven (to his credit) changed the script.  

What is creepier than a child molester? What about an undead one? One that has supernatural powers? It's not hard to be afraid of Freddy Krueger if you were introduced to him at a young age as I was.  I had nightmares about him for years.  Even when the movies got cheesier and focused more on Freddy cracking wise and finding inventive ways to kill people than on his inherent grossness on a fundamental level, he still freaked me out.  

Jackie Earle Haley is only a couple of inches taller than me.  He is not imposing physically.  But he had an air of menace about him when I saw him in Watchmen as Rorschach.  I was actually pretty interested to see what he did with the role of Freddy Krueger because of this.  Even Robert Englund thought he was a good choice, saying his stature would give a sense of vulnerability to role.  It's an interesting possibility for a character who embodies neglect and abuse and the powerlessness of children.  The unfortunate fact is that Haley isn't really given a chance.  He's defeated by the makeup which, while more realistic, is really obviously a lot more restricting in the way of his performance.  He's defeated by the direction, which couples every appearance of Freddy with a series of loud bangs and thuds and other foley artist games of grab ass.  The attempts at scares are cheap.  NoES is a high-startle movie and I hate high-startle movies.  They are the result of lazy writing and they are lame.  I should be scared of Freddy because he will fucking disembowel me, not because someone slams a baseball bat into an empty oil drum.  

The teenage protagonists (Dean, Kris, Jesse, Nancy and Quentin) are one dimensional and uninteresting.  This isn't necessarily a huge problem on a continuity level as it was mostly true of the characters in the original film.  Considering that the script turned the story into a boring Scooby Doo mystery, however, it is problematic.  It is therefore unsurprising when, after Dean dies, the subsequent deaths seem to result in no emotion whatsoever.  It's fine, the audience doesn't care, either.  Very basic issues with the plot raise questions which are never answered.  What kind of preschool lets someone live in the basement or needs an on-site gardener? When the protagonists discover the nature of Freddy's crimes, why do they then leap to the conclusion that they lied and he was innocent? How did they all somehow manage to forget so completely what happened to them (the paper-thin excuse that "who remembers when they were five?" notwithstanding) especially when it was something so traumatic? What is Freddy's association with the boiler room in this movie if he took his victims to the basement of the school and not the boiler room as in the original? Why did they bother to cast anyone as Nancy's mother at all when she serves virtually no purpose?  

Dean dies within the first ten minutes of the movie.  He had been having bad dreams.  Eventually everyone else cops to having these dreams, too.  Kris dies next and her boyfriend Jesse is arrested since he set off her security system and ran down the street soaked in her blood like a dumbass.  After attempting to keep himself awake for a while, Jesse is let out of his cell in the prison.  He walks down the hall.  The lights fade out for a blink and when they come back up again he is in the labyrinthine boiler room.  When Jesse dies in reality and we return to the dream to find him still alive, Freddy taunts him with the knowledge that the brain continues functioning for a few minutes after death (yikes).  Quentin dreams of Freddy's death after passing out at swim team practice.  The Elm Street parents are a violent and nearly remorseless posse while Freddy is afraid and helpless and cornered.  I was begging internally to be reminded that this is Freddy's version of events, that it behooves him to lie about how bloodthirsty the adults involved were or how innocent he was in the whole affair.  This proved to be an opportunity wasted as we're left to take it for granted that this is how it happened.  (It only results in confusion later when it's confirmed he wasn't innocent at all.)  Quentin shivers in his Speed-o, looking vulnerable and sick and with something of the sad, wet dog about him.  I was relieved on his behalf when he wasn't murdered while practically naked.  There were good little touches, too.  Nancy listens to music late at night while chugging coffee and drawing scary pictures.  Her earbuds are smeared with charcoal.  Quentin chows his ADD medication to keep himself awake (he offers some to Nancy.  Ever the goody-goody, even in this incarnation, she declines).  The interwebs are consulted to learn about the actual medical effects of sleep deprivation.  The characters begin to have waking dreams.  This could have been incredibly creepy if only there had actually been some atmosphere in this movie.

Quentin and Nancy resolve to return the scene of the crime (the preschool and its basement) after watching some lame-ass video blog belonging to a random dude talking about his Freddy-related nightmares.  He says he feels Freddy is leading him to the preschool and specifically to the basement.  He assumes this is because Freddy wants him to "find something".  Is the video blogger one of the Elm Street children? Presumably, but we're never told.  All of this is something Nancy could have figured out herself considering her dreams keep ending up at the preschool her mother wants her to just please forget about (HMMM), but the director wanted to point out that this is 2010 so we get Crime Solving Through Blogs, instead.  Shaggy and Scooby troop down to the basement in the middle of the night and find the hidey-hole where Freddy took the children.  He was totally a molester, you guys! The audience shows zero surprise.  Why did we entertain the notion that he was innocent at all when it resulted in no plot advancement or character development? To give the teenagers something to bitch to their parents about, I guess.  Possibly it was to have clips to put in the trailers to trick people into thinking they were going to entirely change Freddy's back story.  Whatever the case, it is pointless and stupid.  While Nancy turns her attention on the drawings tacked to the walls, her memories begin to resurface.  She paints with Fred Krueger.  They giggle. Quentin, meanwhile, finds a box that contains Polaroids ("What are they?"  "Pictures.  Of you.").  He valiantly attempts to keep her from seeing them.  She snatches them away from him anyway.  It is gross and sad and thankfully for obvious reasons the audience is never assailed with whatever it is she sees.  She is understandably completely freaked out. 

Nancy and Quentin no longer have functioning brains at this point.  They decide to attempt to bring Freddy into the real world but think it is best to do so in his creepy, dusty bedroom in the basement of the abandoned preschool rather than in a more controlled environment to which they might bring guns or a giant sledgehammer.  Following a dream sequence that features the facepalm-inducing "I know! I'll hide in the closet!" moment and a very unsettling scene in which Freddy lies on a bed with Nancy all dolled up like a five-year-old and strokes her all over with his bladed glove, everyone finally wakes up.  A half assed fight scene ensues, lasts for about a minute and a half and ends with Freddy being nearly beheaded with the blade pulled from a guillotine-style paper cutter.  Yes.

The movie ends with Freddy smashing through a mirror and poking out Nikki from Spin City's eyes by shoving his claws through the back of her head.  This is hilarious but not scary.  Nancy screams and screams until we smash into the credits, at which point I turned to my husband and informed him that Haley has signed on for two more of these movies.  Considering there were only seven people in the theater for a movie that has only been out for a couple of weeks, I'm going to hold on to the hope that this clumsy attempt at a franchise reboot will end before it really begins.

Comments

[Adoragore]

"Hey remember that scene from the original, low-budget version where an actor shoves his head and arms into a sheet of rubber and it looks like he is coming through the wall and it's totally fucked up and disturbing? Let's do that in this movie only instead we'll use CGI so it looks fake and therefore not at all threatening."

[Daniel]

bobby deerfield

[Daniel]

my last captcha image said "cum" is there anything to be worried about here