The latest in the long line of horror remakes by Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes is billed as a ‘Re-Imagining’ of Wes Craven’s 1984 classic. Directed by Samuel Bayer; a filmmaker best known for music videos rather than feature films. The film is the first of the series not to feature Robert Englund as Freddy Kruger, the iconic murderer is this time played by Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen). The plot of this remake is identical to the original film, as Nancy (Rooney Mara) battles a mysterious figure from her past who stalks her in her dreams. This similarity with the original film is actually one of the many problems with this rebooted version.
One of the major issues which strikes the viewer immediately is the fact that despite the film been implicitly promoted as a ‘Re-Imagining’ of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, it is the very opposite. Bayer’s Nightmare is essentially just a straight remake of the 1984 film with improved special effects; this is a criminal waste of such great potential for taking the Nightmare franchise in a new and exciting direction. Of the three big slasher success stories of the 1980’s, the other two being Halloween and Friday the 13th; A Nightmare on Elm Street is the most remakeable because of its effects heavy narrative and the endless possibilities of the notion of Freddy stalking his victims in their sleep. Instead of pursuing any of these possibilities, Bayer cops out at the first opportunity and creates an over blown, unimaginative mess of a film.
Another huge problem with the film is the premise that all of the children had somehow managed to suppress their memories of Freddie. How this was achieved is never explained in the film, and is quite frankly completely ridiculous and a gaping plot hole at the very heart of the film, which Bayer incredibly seems to totally overlook. This is unforgivably poor filmmaking; I can think of no reason whatsoever why a director could possibly see fit to leave this plot point completely unexplained. It seems to me that Bayer is so obsessed with creating fancy, eye catching CGI effects than crafting a horror film whose narrative contains anything approaching cohesion and flow.
Although Nightmare does contain some jumpy moments, these moments are so random and out of nowhere that they cannot be given any real credit from a creative point of view. These sequences aren’t carefully constructed scares which results on a great jumpy moment of pay off for the audience; they are simply the cinematic equivalent of hiding behind a door and shouting BOO! When someone opens it, and let’s face it, anyone can do that. In conclusion, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street is a criminal waste of a great opportunity to introduce a new generation to one of the most iconic horror characters in the history of the genre.
