Lets start with the children. In the old Nightmare, the kids feel like a group you could relate to, they’re mostly honest kids dealing with crap. The new kids though, for some reason I can’t grasp, feel like they’re all going to break down and cry the entire time. The main female Nancy, played by Rooney Mara, is an artistic girl that just doesn’t fit in with anyone else in high school. She thusly spends a lot of time in her room, drawing up dark, edgy pictures of scary faces. In short, she makes me want to vomit. The whole movie I was just waiting for her to pull out a razor blade and go to town on her wrists in some excuse to deal with the world. The male lead isn’t much better I’m afraid. Quentin, played by Kyle Gallner, is the whiniest horror character I’ve seen in a long time, and maybe ever. He seems like all it’s going to take is one little thing to push him over the edge and he’ll break down and cry about how horrible the world is. The supporting characters aren’t too bad, granted you never see them for too long at once, unless they’re about to get killed. In all, the characters are lacking.
But in all honesty, the star of the show is Freddy, and I must admit that for the most part I was happy with the way Jackie Earle Haley played the character, but there were some parts that just brought him down. His make-up is very odd, something about it just doesn’t look right, and I couldn’t figure out what it was until one of my friends said something about it. He described it as some kind of Freddy Krueger and Alien love child, and the longer I think about it, he’s pretty damn close. The way he played the character also created some issues for me. The whole time the company was promoting the film, all I seemed to hear was about how this was going to make Nightmare on Elm Street serious again, and how they were going to move away from the campy horror of the old ones. They had me sold through most of the story until almost the very end. There is a part where Freddy is chasing Nancy through dream world. She turns a corner and attempts to run down a hallway, but because she’s in dream world, the hallway flood turns to liquid and she starts to sink. As she’s swimming away Freddy rounds the corner, looks at her and says, “Now that’s what I call a wet dream”……I’m sorry, can someone else please explain to me where/how that fits the whole “serious” aspect they were trying to cash in on?
Quick side note, I don’t know why everyone seems to be in love with the fact that they give you back story in the remake, because they give you the exact same story in the original. On my DVD it’s chapter 17 in the select a scene and it’s entitled “Mommy killed him”. Talks about how he was a child killer and they trapped him in a boiler room and set the place on fire, so it’s not like this back story is anything new to the series.
Now then, speaking of the back story of Freddy, this is another thing that the movie screws up. In the original we find out Freddy is a child killer, and that the parents wanted to get revenge on him. It’s not that he killed any of their children, just the fact he killed little kids. In the new one, they make him a child molester, and he knew all these kids back when they were 4 or so. But when the parents find out about what he does, they track him down and set him on fire, and then separate all the kids so they forget about Freddy. I guess the thing that pisses me off is the fact it seems like everyone was sitting in on a meeting for the movie and said “hey we have this original story that people know….but fuck it, let’s try to do something different.” The parents in the new film really don’t have any reason to set him on fire either. In the original it’s justified because Freddy get’s out of prison because someone signs the search warrant wrong, so the parents hunt him down. In the new one though, they basically admit that they never go to the police, never tell any authority, they just hunt him down and murder him because they can. There is a point where Quentin asks his dad if there is any evidence, and his dad just looks at him, but never answers the question. This led me to believe for about another 45 minutes of movie that they killed him in cold blood. Look I don’t have kids, and I’m not saying that child molesters are awesome people, but to just run out and set someone on fire on the assumption that he did something seems a little out there.
The killings are decent, but nothing to really write home about. Some of them follow the original, and some of them are new. If you’re looking forward to seeing how they do the killing of Johnny Depp’s character, the whole getting sucked into a bed and then shot back out as a bloody mess, sorry but they don’t do it. Yes you read that correctly. They. Don’t. Do. It. Honestly this was probably the biggest letdown of the entire movie for me. I was really excited to see how CGI was going to make this the best part of the film and then it didn’t happen.
No nudity. The most you get a girl in short-shorts and a tight t-shirt running around, but that’s really about it. You do get Nancy in the bathtub, but just like in the original they don’t show you anything. Damn right?
The last thing I’m going to talk about in this monster of a post is how the title is completely wrong. You see I imagine that with a title like A Nightmare on Elm Street, I’m going to see characters that are on Elm Street get harassed all the time. Really though they stay on Elm Street for about 15 minutes of the entire movie, and then they run all over town. The funny thing is, it’s the girl that doesn’t even live on Elm in the original that gets killed on Elm in the new one.
Well it looks like I’m back and I had a lot to say. Here quick I’m planning to get a review up for a movie called Spirit Camp that I caught about a week ago, and I plan on putting up a review for a movie that’s absolute crap, but still holds a spot in my heart.
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OVERALL RATING--2-- |
3 comments:
Yeah, a rating of 2 fits it right. What I don't understand is why Michael Bay continues to regurgitate elements from his take on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I liked. After seeing the Friday the 13th remake, the whole underground bunker is what took me back down TCM memory lane. Jason lived in a cabin with his mom's head and took no prisoners, that's just the way it is. In the new Nightmare, we see a pig's head on the stove as the guy walks thorugh the restaurant's kitchen, is this not taken from the rotting pig's head we see in the display case in the gas station/restaurant in TCM? Damn, Michael, let each movie not piggy back the other. Good review Stalls.
See, we need to let Zombie take the lead on more horror reboots, at least he makes one that's worth a damn lol.
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