A Nightmare On Elm Street 2010:
Wes Craven's franchise-starting 1984 original had an inventive idea driving the properly crafted narrative, and it introduced us to a pitch-perfect new face of terror (well, until he turned into a cartoon character marketted - bizarrely, even perversely - to children as a cuddly rogue at the height of his popularity). Samual Beyer directs his film debut like a music video (he's best known for the video to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Green Day's "American Idiot" videos). Like a music video it's impatient to get going (the movie begins at minute zero with us already in a nightmare), and due to the rush you care little (if at all) for the protagonists.
On the one hand it wants to rip-off the famous moments from Craven's decidedly far superior original, and on the other it wants to branch out ... but whenever it does, it hints at an idea that could have (in the hands of a talented screenwriter who cared about motivation, characterisation, tension building, and pacing) created a really interesting new take on a well-worn genre legend. Then it goes and blows it, time and again, and just cobbles together a bunch of vaguely connected dream sequences (none of which are scary, let alone chilling, nor mildly cool). Half of the cast feel totally disconnected (more like celebrity wannabes, than anyone interested in acting), and the other half that have any talent are totally wasted (I'll be interested to see Roony Mara take on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo under the superior direction of David Fincher, and Kyle Gallner in Kevin Smith's much-talked-about chiller Red State).
Only one sequence - a flash back to how-and-why Freddy got fried - holds any intrigue (indeed, a talented screenwriter could have crafted a deeply dark origin story), but that doesn't save the movie from being a heartless, witless, and completely-and-utterly pale immitation of Craven's iconic original. Presentationally it feels like an imitation of the Friday 13th remake, which in-turn was an imitation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and The Amityville Horror remake (all produced by Platinum Dunes ... or 'The Remake Assembly Line' as it should be known). These Platinum Dunes movies have dropped in quality consistently with each new product that's foisted upon the horror community (notorious gluttons for punishment, whose curiosity inevitably kills the cat) from good-but-still-inferior-to-the-original, to downright woeful.
Jackie Earle Hayley is also wasted here - under a supposedly 'more realistic' (yet entirely unconvincing, nor frightening) mask - with a dud script and a director who blows his load almost immediately revealing too much of Freddy early on (several times). This could have been a golden opportunity to make a dark origin story that avoided the content of the original almost entirely, but instead this is just another cash-hungry, churned-out, load of old bullshit. Avoid it like the plague, and let's hope they don't make a sequel to it!
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Originally Posted by MinionZombie
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