I had ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’

Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley) needs a manicure.

The movie: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Directed by: Samuel Bayer

Written by: Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer

The O.G. who created the movie: Wes Craven

Famous people you will recognize: Jackie Earle Haley and Emmett Cullen –er – I mean Kellan Lutz

People who are kind of famous and probably don’t recognize: Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker and others

The story: A seriously disturbed, disfigured-by-fire man in a raggedy striped sweater and fedora haunts the dreams of hot, angsty teenagers with his knived fingers.

The review: When I was a child, I lived one block away from an Elm Street. Needless to say, I was utterly frightened to go to sleep after I viewed the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) by slasher auteur Wes Craven. Every time I closed my eyes, I would see the the sinewy horror that was Freddy Krueger’s face. Before I would even be close to falling asleep, I imagined supernatural forces tossing my body all over a room like a rag doll. I imagined being dismembered at the hands of the psychopathic gnarly toothed mad man. I could not bring myself to sleep without the light on. I felt as though I was living the tormented life of the Nancy Thompson (who, by the way, was also in Just the 10 of Us.)

This “re-imagining” didn’t give me that delightful torture.

This movie is supposed to be a stand-alone creature from the original (that produced a small movie star by the name of Johnny Depp), but there is no way a person cannot do a side-by-side comparison. Freddy Krueger is an iconic horror movie character that should be handled with a discerning eye – and for the most part, the movie did just that. Jackie Earle Haley slips into the role with a creepy joie de vivre of pedophiliac proportions. In the spurts of screen time he has, Haley pays enough homage to the character made famous by Robert Englund. At the same time, he taunts and hunts his prey like a little boy would pull the wings off of a fly just to see it suffer. Then, out of nowhere, the boy crushes him with a laughing fist.

The movie is supposed to dive deep into the origin of Freddy, only to be eclipsed by the bland “we-must-stay-awake-or-we’ll-die” storyline provided its glossy cast of American Eagle models. The movie also brings it into the 21st century with some Red Bull, recreational use of Ritalin, cell phone alarm clocks, vlogging and a fictional internet search engine that can instantly find ANYONE you are looking for in minutes.

But back to the origin story – seeing why Freddy became a monster was was captivating and gave an opportunity to make it more of a character study – but the masses do not want to see something so thought provoking. They want to see attractive actors get mauled by a grotesque man with a claw. The movie delivers a healthy amount of that.

There was a moment when I had an inkling of hope with the almost clever story, but at that point, I just wanted Freddy to slice and dice everyone and have the movie be done. It eventually ended, but unfortunately, it left the doors open for a sequel. Grade: C