Wes Craven’s 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the all-time greatest horror movies of the ‘80s. It spawned a long-running franchise and a villain who was recognizable to people who had never even seen the film. Its financial success is so responsible for jumpstarting New Line Cinema as a company it’s commonly referred to as “The House that Freddy Built.” It made Wes Craven and Robert Englund into horror demigods worthy of any horror fan’s respect. As with any horror franchise that lasted as long as the Nightmare series, it got tired and the quality dropped off with some really dull, stale entries. Aside from the few sequels that proved to be better than expected, A Nightmare on Elm Street as a film franchise really only had Robert Englund to keep it interesting by the end. So when Michael Bay was making the rounds remaking a bunch of notable horror movie franchises in the mid-2000s, he had a decision to make: make another sequel with the aging but talented Englund, or cast someone else for a weak cash-grab of a remake. Of course, we know what was the result.

Pros

It’s still a Nightmare movie so there are some moments and camera effects that look cool every once in a while

Cons

Some shots from the original film are recreated and look terrible in addition to being unnecessary
Characters are uncharismatic and boring
Dialogue is vapid and devoid of anything interesting
Kreuger is boring
Character deaths are uninteresting
Effects look bad in a lot of places
Plot is needlessly complicated for the sake of adding a “twist”
Movie does not justify its existence

Plot & Thoughts

Even someone who has never seen a single Nightmare on Elm Street movie knows that the plot centers around the malicious serial killer Freddy Kreuger and how he is able to invade the dreams of some unfortunate teenagers and kill them. While later movies would go on to try to explain the curse of Kreuger and how he was able to even become this powerful dream demon, the original was mostly focused on the mystery of what was happening to the kids and who the hell Freddy Kreuger was. So, considering the fact that that Kreuger is one of the most iconic horror movie villains that everyone already knows at this point, it’s difficult to make a newer movie but still attempt to keep that original mystery compelling.

That’s one of the many reasons why this remake doesn’t really work or needs to exist for that matter. We as the audience already know so much more than the characters in the movie, they have a severe handicap when it comes to making their story interesting. The actors themselves have to do some heavy lifting to make their story compelling as they try to solve the mystery with which the audience is already familiar. Unfortunately, none of the actors are very charismatic in their roles. They’re also done no favors by the crappy script. While I like Jacky Earle Haley and appreciate how he was trying to bring some dark seriousness to the role of Kreuger, he ends up just being a boring dude who looks like he has melted cheese on his face and nothing more. Part of why Robert Englund’s Freddy is so iconic is because he had a personality. Here, Freddy is barely more than a Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers with how little personality is on display.

But let’s say, for the sake of the argument, you are one of those individuals who has gone through their entire life not knowing what A Nightmare on Elm Street is about and have no affinity for the original characters. First of all, apologies for spoiling the plot and the additional spoiling I’m about to do, but also, I would just recommend watching the original instead of playing into the hands of movie executives by watching crappy remakes first. Nevertheless, to sum up the backstory of Freddy Kreuger in the original film: he was a child murderer who was able to get away with his crimes due to some legal loopholes and police incompetence. The parents of the community, outraged at this injustice, did some vigilante work and burned him alive in a boiler room. As revenge, Kreuger returned with his dream powers to kill the children of those parents responsible.

The same backstory is more or less disclosed here, except the remake attempts to do something that could have been interesting, had they been able to pull it off. It’s suggested at some point that Kreuger may or may not have been a pedophile and the parents might have killed an innocent man, considering the only evidence against him were testimonies of small children. Unfortunately for the film’s poor attempt at ambiguity, this theory falls flat as soon as it’s suggested. Why? Prior to this point in the film at which his innocence is suggested, Kreuger has already killed multiple people in their dreams and demonstrated a detestable personality trait by licking Nancy’s (Rooney Mara) ear and saying “You were always my favorite.” There was no mystery to these actions. They were very clearly visible. So when Quentin (Kyle Gallner) says “You killed an innocent man,” I sat there shaking my head in disbelief that they would even try to play that off as a possibility. Of course, they find evidence that proves he’s not innocent later and try to present that as some sort of surprise. Once again, filmmakers seem to assume that the audience is as dumb as their characters are.

Based on everything we’ve seen regarding Freddy up to this point, there is no reason for us to believe that he’s innocent. We have to assume there is something dark about him in order for him to be willing to murder teenagers as revenge for his death. In the flashback sequence that shows Kreuger’s original demise, he is presented as meek and scared to try to play up the innocence factor. Anyone seeking revenge for their own death as a murderous spirit would most likely go after the people who killed them, not their kids. If an innocent man wanted revenge like it’s suggested, going from completely innocent to child/teenager murderer seems like a bit of a leap. It would have been much easier and less complicated to just call him a killer from the start, like the original film. But maybe you could also say that the fact that he wasn’t a killer before his death justifies why his methods of murder here are much simpler and boring in comparison to every other death in the Nightmare franchise.

That’s right. In addition to the boring retelling of the plot that falls flat, even the dreams and deaths are lame. There’s the recreated scene in which one girl flies around her bedroom as she’s murdered in her sleep, but it doesn’t look as good because it just uses wires instead of the rotating room effect of the original. The others are just simple, straightforward stabbings. I expect this from Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but one of the things that made the Nightmare franchise special was how freaky and surreal the horror could be. With dreams being the setting, that is a huge opportunity to get creative. The original film didn’t get as outlandish as later movies—probably more due to the budget and the fact that the original is basically an independent film—but it still had the iconic blood fountain with Johnny Depp. Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to “stay grounded” in their remake, but then they probably shouldn’t have used so much crappy CGI and tried to spin Kreuger’s backstory in a way that didn’t work.

Regardless of everything I’ve said thus far, you knew I wasn’t going to like this movie. Everyone knows that remakes have to face a steep, uphill battle for approval from fans. The primary purpose of a remake these days is to take a franchise that’s recognizable and introduce it to new audiences while getting existing fans to come see the new interpretation to make as much money off the brand name as possible. Pleasing the existing fans is a difficult task and rarely does it ever succeed. What usually happens, is the movie studio rakes in a bunch of money from the curious and is rewarded for their half-assed effort, while annoying fans and impressing very few new viewers. I held off on seeing this movie for a full decade for this reason. I knew I wasn’t going to be pleased. As it turns out, neither was anyone else because there hasn’t been a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie since then. So, much like this remake, this review didn’t need to exist either, but thanks for reading anyway.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Surprise, surprise! This remake is a soulless cash-grab piece of garbage that does more detriment to its argument for existence than anything else. The original film was a bold attempt at a unique horror story that required a fair amount of creativity and ingenuity that make it into the classic that it is. This remake is almost the polar opposite. A script written by hacks, a cast devoid of charisma or charm, a series of CGI-filled scenes that look worse than the original scenes that inspired them, and a poorly done redesign of Freddy Kreuger spell out only a handful of the reasons why this movie should not exist or be watched again.

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