Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
5/16/10
*****SPOILER
ALERT: VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING WORTH DISCUSSING ABOUT THE NIGHTMARE
ON ELM STREET REMAKE IS PLAYED AS A SURPRISE BY THE MOVIE, SO IF YOU
WANT TO REMAIN UNSPOILED, YOU MIGHT WANNA WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE IT TO READ
THIS. JUST SAYIN'*****
The
business side of Hollywood is, by its nature, both mercenary and unimaginative.
Nowhere is that more true than in the horror genre: horror movies
don't get greenlit because the head of the studio's wife fell in love with
a bestseller or because you just can't say no to a folly Brad Pitt's become
attached to when you'll inevitably need his goodwill down the road.
Instead, studios become married to models of horror success built on the
thing they understand best: repetition. Most of the time, that
means sequels. Eight, nine, ten trips back to the same well?
Why not! But the current trend is tied to a larger studio love affair
with the marketability of remakes. Like Pavlov's salivating dogs,
moviegoers respond when the name of a beloved old movie is dangled before
their eyes, and that means that virtually every well-loved horror flick
of the last 40 years either has been or will be remade. The latest
example is probably the biggest outstanding name in modern horror, that
of knife-gloved dream killer Freddy Kreuger. A Nightmare on Elm
Street reintroduces many of the key elements of Wes Craven's iconic
1984 film of the same name, but doesn't have a lot of luck with them.
What is has instead is another word those Studio Suits love to toss around,
albeit one that usually means nothing. Nightmare really does
reimagine the tale for a post-Oprah, post-Shayamalan world. If only
it didn't feel that desperate tug to relaunch the franchise, because the
New Freddy is not somebody you're going to want to spend a lot of sequel
time with. Taken as what it is, director Samuel Bayer's Nightmare
is a compact, interesting horror story, albeit one that fails at its stated
mission. I think most of you would probably like this movie better
if they changed the name and overdubbed all references to “Freddy Krueger”
with “Lenny Lugar”. But it is what it is, and if you can take it
on its own terms, Samuel Bayer's New Nightmare does have its moments.
Dean
Russell (Kellan Lutz) downs one cup of coffee after another desperately
trying to stay awake at an all-night diner. He fails, and in his
dream has his hand slashed by a knife-gloved, badly scarred killed named
Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earl Haley). His girlfriend Kris Fowles (Katie
Cassidy) shows up just long enough to hear some mad rantings and watch
him doze off again and get torn to shreds before her eyes. The funeral
draws her former boyfriend Jesse Braun (Thomas Dekker) and Nancy Holbrook
(Rooney Mara), who is pictured with Kris as children in photos displayed
at the service, but doesn't remember meeting him until high school.
Now it's Kris meeting Freddy in her dreams, and despite Jesse's best efforts
to protect her, she too dies. When Jesse also tastes Freddy's knives,
Nancy and her would-be suitor Quentin O'Grady (Kyle Gallner) are left to
try and puzzle it out, all the while struggling to stay awake as the maniacal
burn victim stalks their sleep as well. It seems that all the kids
in question share a common past at a preschool where a then-living Freddy
worked as a janitor. What secret past has his lethal spirit on their
trail? They'd better find out, before sleep deprivation causes their
brains to shut down, locking them in Freddy's world forever.
Wes
Craven directed two of the eight movies in which Robert Englund played
Kreuger, and in both the boogyman in the stripped sweater represents two
things dear to the director's heart: the power of myth and legend
and our slippery grasp of exactly what “reality” is. Kreuger's dreamworld
in the original Nightmare and Craven's 1994 masterpiece Wes Craven's
New Nightmare is surreal, twisted and unpredictable; in other words,
like real dreams. This remake, on the other hand, uses the dreams
more as an alternate world to which the characters are transported when
they sleep. The new Nightmare isn't really about dreams, it's
about memories, and its Freddy doesn't represent the fairy tale monsters
that might be hiding in our closets, but the real-life boogymen who've
scared us in the past and won't release their grip on our heads.
The skeleton of the story accommodates this shift surprisingly well as
long as you're rooting for the heroes, but horror hounds looking to cuddle
up to Freddy will find the transition from child murderer to child molester
has changed his fundamental nature far more than you might expect.
Since
his Oscar-nominated comeback turn in Little Children, Haley has
specialized in creeps and loons like Watchmen's
Rorschach, and he does a great job doing what the movie asks him to, which
is make you more afraid Freddy's going to touch the kids than kill them.
The new makeup is nothing to write home about and handicaps his ability
to act facially far more than Englund's better-looking mask did years ago.
He is not a franchise-friendly fiend you love to hate, he's hissable scum
I couldn't wait to see dispatched even deeper into hell than he's already
been, which is great when Nightmare is telling its story, not so
much when, as in its deeply regrettable final shot, it's working its franchise.
Mara
shares her older sister Kate's skill at seeming about to shatter from inner
trauma, and the deeper down the child molestation rabbit hole we go, the
better her performance gets. The climactic showdown between victim
and boogyman is a barn-burner, and for a few minutes it seems like Bayer
and company have pulled off something special (I did mention how much I
hated the final shot, right?). Gallner is, as always, very believable
as one of high school's forgotten kids, and I really liked the palpable
sense that the only shot he's got with Nancy involves saving her life.
It's a really interesting game the movie plays, starting out with Cassidy
and Dekker as the stars only to kill both before the halfway mark.
Both are familiar TV faces with starpower to burn (although his role suits
him better than does hers), and once they're gone, Mara and Gallner have
a common person way about them that really makes you feel like the B team's
got no chance now that the stars are dead.
Of
course, it's really all about Nancy, and unlike the original Krueger, who's
on a quest for vengeance born of his grudge against the Elm Street kids'
parents, Haley's Freddy has a very specific, very clever plan to which
all roads are leading. The 1984 movie knows dreams on a very Freudian
level, while the new one regards them very much as a science, with Quentin
doing everything he can to learn about them and use what he discovers to
help save the day. The best thing the screenplay's dug up about sleep
is the concept of “micronaps”, momentary periods of involuntary rest that
kick in after about 70 hours of sleep deprivation. Once the characters
have reached that point, they find their worlds flashing back and forth
between the real world and the dream world, having to flee Freddy for the
few precious moments it takes to wake up again.
Fans
of the Nightmare franchise, hoping for more of the same will be
surprised by how much A Nightmare on Elm Street manages to cover
the same ground without recapturing its spirit. You might, as I did,
find a certain fascination in the new story that takes its place, but don't
expect to see Jackie Earl Haley's Freddy battling Derek Mears' Jason Vorhees
from last year's Friday the 13th remake
anytime soon. It takes more to start a franchise than just hanging
a sign out front. |
