A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) - Movie Review

Official Score = 1 1/2 Devils

Besides the Aliens franchise, one of the earliest horror movies that I can ever remember watching is, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)…

I remember at the time that this movie which had a young Patricia Arquette (True Romance) in it, both scared the hell out of me, and also entertained me as well, part of the reason for this obviously was Freddy Krueger (whom at that time was still being played by Robert Englund).

Now at this time Freddy Kruger was really coming in to his own as a trickster who stalked his upcoming victims in their dreams before he killed them! I also found that I liked the dynamic (and the differences) of the team that would work to defeat Freddy as well (including, a jerk, a geek, a loner strong man, a tough girl, a true believer, and the sceptic… to name a few).

Unfortunately this dynamic would begin to fade in the, ‘Nightmare On Elm Street’ series as the sequels went on, but at this time it was still strong, and in some cases this particular film would help to create an interest in the series as a whole, and is part and parcel the reason why I was glad to see the remake to the classic original series recently!

As a stand alone it is pretty good, as a remake... meh...

Written by: Wesley Strick (Cape Fear), Eric Heisserer (The Thing) and Directed by: Samuel Bayer (Green Day: Bullet In A Bible). Starring: Rooney Mara (The Social Network), Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen), Kyle Gallner (Red State), Katie Cassidy (Kill For Me), Thomas Dekker (The Good Lie) and Clancy Brown (Starship Troopers).

This movie is a re-imagining of the story that we have all grown up to enjoy and get frightened at, you see, a whole bunch of teenagers who become friends at their local High School, start one by one getting terrorized in their dreams by a hideous man in a striped sweater and hat, who is also wearing a glove, that calls himself, ‘Freddy’ (Jackie Early Haley)…

And as these friends start to die off one by one, it will be up to these kids to discover what is going on, and in the process discover a secret that binds these kids together before they thought they had ever met!

Freddy Krueger is about to destroy his first set of kids!

Now all in all, in reviews that I have read and people that I have talked to who have seen this movie, all and all, one for one, each one of them have had very negative comments to make about this movie… And I have to admit that I think that characterization of this movie is kind of fair, but mostly biased…

The truth is, is that this movie is not a horrible movie as a stand alone film… (what I mean by stand alone film, is that if this movie was not a remake, it would not have been that bad.) Of course in the end though, this movie is very paint by numbers and does not have all that much originality to it… Which as a stand alone is kind of bland, but as long as it is a good paint by numbers (like this one is), it is palatable… But as a remake of a classic horror franchise, just straight up sucks!

In the end, this movie is not a horrible, but it could have been better, and if you are looking to watch this movie for the sake of watching it and not expecting some huge fanfare… Then you might enjoy it, otherwise I would not recommend checking this one out.