Starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton.
Director: Samuel Bayer.
I didn't really mind the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street the way many people did. I've discussed my general mindset on reboots and the like before on this blog, and nothing has changed: I see them as no different than making another adaptation of Shakespeare. It's a piece of fiction being redone in a new fashion for a new audience. It's fine. But, even for remakes, I found this one to largely be mostly watchable. It certainly is better than Freddy's Dead at any rate.
I made a few allusions to a greater mindset on the remake and fan response to the sequels and how it all tied together. My general thesis statement on that score is this: the remake is basically the movie the fans said they wanted, and they rejected it. Over the years people complained about the franchise softening up on Freddy: he wasn't as "dark" as he used to be, and they needed another movie where he became scary again. The trouble with this is that, even back in Craven's original film, the character was hardly dark. The concept was a dark, but the character's most frightening and resonant trait was how amused he was by everything. It was never about "dark", really, it was about gallows humor. In addition to that, Craven was smart and educated enough to realize he was making direct allusions to trickster Gods from ancient myth, but that's for a much larger piece on the series.
My point is that the fan base was seeing something that wasn't there. But they said they wanted dark. So, the remake comes along and this thing is dark as fuck. The fan base claimed they wanted the molestation angle brought up again, and the remake did it. Jackie Earle Haley plays the character as a molester, a rapist, a monster...his makeup is horrific, his stance is highly aggressive. In short, he drops Englund's hammy performance. He and the movie are "dark." And yet, everyone hates it. Be careful what you wish for.
Anyway, we get a quick introduction to the concept and characters: Katie Cassidy is our decoy protagonist (taking the Amanda Wyss role of Tina from the original, though she's called Chris here), witnessing the death of her friend at a diner. Working at the diner is Nancy, our actual star, played by Academy Award Nominee Rooney Mara (shortly before her star making turn in the remake of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and Quentin has a crush on her. Then TV star Thomas Dekker plays Jesse, Chris's ex boyfriend. Her friend dies at the diner, and Chris attempts to confide in Jesse that she thinks something horrible is going on. Nancy agrees with her. Nancy's Mom is played by Connie Britton, who is also now famous after turns on American Horror Story and Nashville. Clancy Brown shows up, too. It's a good cast. I love Katie Cassidy (but I'll try not to retread that subject, I did it enough when I did Black X-mas), and I'm psyched that she's out decoy protagonist at the start. Even though she wears Uggs.
There are things I could do without in this film, though: my earlier statements about the miscommunication between fans and the creators should not be misconstrued as a total endorsement of the film. I certainly don't think it's a great flick by any means. I think it's mostly merely okay. The first real scare of the film goes to Freddy being surprisingly quick and violence, pinning Chris to the ground and growling "Remember me?" It actually isn't bad.
I really do think Jackie Earle Haley did a strong job as the character, and the makeup effects on him are very decent. He may not be Englund, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. As I said earlier, Englund had a very specific vision for the character: it was pretty hammy and humorous. That was fun, and he was great, but it isn't necessarily the ONLY read for the character. Haley brings some of that humor to the role, but mostly seems pre-occupied with being evil and aggressive, and I think it actually works really well. Different doesn't mean wrong, and hell: there are eight movies with Englund performances in them, and they'll always be there.
Thomas Dekker does okay with his role, even if he does seem a little young to be dating Katie Cassidy. Honestly, really, expecting me to believe that Katie Cassidy is a high schooler is a bit odd. She gives a good performance, but it really is kind of absurd to tell me she's a teenager. His character is a little uneven, too: we don't know much about him besides being Chris' ex, and he's kind of a jerk.
I think the main issue with this film is that it's a little by-the-numbers. Chris' nightmare goes in some okay places, but the whole blue filter look mostly feels a little cliched at this point. Haley gives some good creeps as Freddy throughout the dream, especially when Chris wanders around an abandoned elementary school as she hears him count down for hide and seek. Then they do a halfway decent catapult nightmare misdirect, which I enjoy. However, this film falls prey to problems that a lot of remakes do: the line between strong referencing and adaptation and direct lifting for the source material is a very fine one, and I'm not sure this film walks it properly. I feel like it's either the Shakespeare thing(basically always the same with a few tweaks) or complete reinvention. When you try to have both, things tend to get messy, and this film lands there more often than not.
Jesse, locked up for murdering Chris, suffers from a dream while inside that ultimately gets him killed. I read somewhere that actor Dekker purposefully wanted to "scream like a girl" to buck traditional gender roles in horror, which is pretty cool of him. The sequence itself is appropriately dingy and colored with reds, yellows and oranges, making it look hot and sweaty and hellish. The CGI blood effects don't do it any favors...and Haley once again gives some strong moments. Haley plays the character with a lot of anger, too...he's a ball of rage. It's an interesting take.
Meanwhile, Nancy and Quentin continue to have virtually no chemistry...I'm not sure whose fault it is, either. Don't get me wrong, I actually think Rooney Mara is incredibly talented. This movie, though...well, she seems to be playing aloof or detached a little too much, to the point where she isn't making enough of a presence of herself. Kyle Gallner more or less falls under the same category. Though it isn't really fair of me to assign "fault" and I apologize for that. Chemistry is it's own strange alchemy and some actors just don't have it together. Mara and Gallner don't have any together.
The revisiting of the bathtub scene really wasn't super necessary, but that isn't really the movies fault. I was making an argument just the other day about this film in a discussion over the inherent self-referential nature of remakes, and on "fan service." The argument I made was that fans have made fan service an unfortunate given: people complain when remakes aren't "true to the original" and, as such, filmmakers feel compelled to throw in scenes that are directly lifted from the source material. Unfortunately, film makers are generally too afraid to let remakes be themselves.
There are some very lovely dream images in this film when allowed to do it's own thing, though; when Nancy returns from her bath and finds it snowing in her room, it's some strong set dressing and effects work, especially as she moves through the room to the elementary school from Chris' dream earlier...actually, that whole sequence was really well done, right down to her encounter with Freddy. Interestingly enough, Mara and Haley DO work well together. And, again, Haley brings that creepy, dark, sexual predator energy to the party. It's creepy stuff.
The flashback is, again, suitably upsetting: the "Freddy is molester" element that was simply hinted at in the original roars its way to the foreground here, to the point that I feel like this movie is allowed to get TOO "dark." Like, the fantastic elements of the series which ultimately make it moderately harmless and fun are superseded by a really unpleasant element that is, again, what a lot of fans said they wanted. I think it works better as an insinuation than it does as a full fledged plot element, even if it does offer a fairly interesting misdirect: that Freddy may have been innocent of his crimes which, while interesting, definitely had me worried for awhile. Had they really played that card, I would have been quite irritated. The directness of the molestation element does provide suitable motivation for the parents to lynch the guy, it's just...unpleasant.
I always found it a little odd how readily they wrote themselves into a corner in regards to sequels. Nancy's research finds that she and Quentin are literally the only ones left, which means that sequels would have basically been impossible.
Not sure how I feel about the "Nancy and Quentin look like junkies" thing. It makes enough sense, it's just not super effective. I DO like the Pharmacy scene with Nancy drifting in and out of the market and the dream world. It's a pretty impressive scene production wise. Again, when this movie does its own thing with the dream stuff, it's capable of going to some decent places creatively and visually. Rooney is doing some better work, too, as time goes on. The script doesn't always give her the best dialogue to work with, and she still has very awkward chemistry with her co-star, but she's cutting a more final girl figure as things move along. I am a fan of Rooney Mara.
Once again, the climax keeps proving a lot of my point: there's a lot of good stuff going on throughout this sequence except when it feels the need to directly point out that it's a remake. Nancy confronts him, hides in the closet...and then she sinks into ground and Freddy makes his own real one-liner, and it's ripped off from Part 4. Then things go back to being unpleasant again as Freddy basically dresses Nancy up in little girl clothes and makes some pretty upsetting statements on what he wants from her...like I said, TOO dark. Haley is playing the role very well, and Mara is giving as good as she gets, but the content just gets a little too intense to be much fun.
CGI blood effects are the worst. So is the "You're in my world now, bitch" line. Mara doesn't even seen comfortable saying it. The last scare looks terrible. Meh.
Final Thoughts: It's not a great film, but for what it is...well, this isn't so bad a film. I'd argue that it's actually quite good when it's being allowed to do what it wants to, which is be it's own film. The Nightmare sequences, performance ques and dialogue that isn't ripped from the original series mostly are pretty well done. The film does get too "dark" for it's own good, though: too often does it get carried away in trying to be edgy to the point of no longer being any fun whatsoever. Seeing a young woman weep over finding nude photos of her five year old self really isn't the kind of thing a film about a dream monster with knife fingers should probably be about. Between that and awkward fan service moments, things never quite reach the heights they probably should. Still, enough of it is decent enough that it's not a total loss.
Final Rating: Two and a Half stars.
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