A Nightmare on Elm Street is a remake of the classic 1984 horror film of the same title written and directed by the legendary Wes Craven.  This version, produced by Michael Bay’s remake/childhood memory rape machine Platinum Dunes, is written by Wesley Strick (Doom, Arachnophobia)  & Eric Heisserer and is directed by Samuel Bayer (various music videos).  It re-casts the iconic role of Freddy Krueger who has always been played by Robert Englund up to this point with Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen, Little Children).  It also stars Kyle Gallner (Veronica Mars, Jennifer’s Body), Clancy Brown (Starship Troopers), Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights), Katie Cassidy (Melrose Place remake), and Rooney Mara (Youth In Revolt).

If you’re not familiar with the plot then you’ve been living in a cave apparently, so I won’t waste space here going over that familiar ground.

Rooney Mara takes on Nancy

So the thing is A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the most iconic films of all time.  Robert Englund’s Freddy is like Mickey Mouse in terms of being iconic.  And for my generation these films are revered.  The Elm Street series may have taken some poor turns but they were always exciting and always were something to look forward to.  Especially the original.  This remake takes pieces of the original, but doesn’t adhere to the same story.  Essentially it’s a different movie featuring Freddy Krueger.  Besides him and the title (and some backstory, kinda sorta) they only kept Heather Langenkamp’s character of Nancy, although really she’s the same in first name only.

Katie Cassidy is the film's eye candy.

So it’s quite understandable that for the entire length of this movie all I really felt was angry.  Angry that such a brilliant, iconic, piece of cinematic history could be pissed all over by an unnecessary remake.  I’d really like to know why this film was even the least bit necessary.  I in theory understand the thought behind this.  They want to get the audience and money from a Freddy film, but want to get a new, younger, audience into the franchise since all us old Freddy fans are, well, old.  However this is completely insane.  As bad as some of the sequels were, you could easily get my ass to a theatre with another sequel featuring Englund in the starring role.  You’d probably wind up with a much bigger audience, because honestly I don’t want to see my childhood raped (if you think that’s a strong term it’s not) and I’m not the only one.

Anyway so like I said this film for some reason changes all the characters and everything, but is essentially the same as the original plot-wise.  But it’s insanely flawed.  This starts from the very first scene.  In it we meet someone we’ve never seen before who tells his girlfriend (?) that he’s having nightmares that are coming real.  Then he gets killed.  Of course it looks like a suicide.  But we’ve literally known this character for all of 5 minutes and don’t care.  But every other character in the movie is deeply effected by this death.  The main problem here is that we’re never really told or shown in any way that these other characters had any present day connection to him (of course they have a childhood connection that they are unaware about) that would make his death have such a significant impact.

Next we find that they’re all having dreams about the same guy, we’re mostly shown only one girl actually experiencing this and just having other characters say it.  Then pretty suddenly the entire focus of the movie shifts to who our two eventual leads are, Quentin (Gallner) and Nancy (Mara).  It’s sort of an odd shift in focus.

The really big change here is the focus on the backstory.  A lot of time is dedicated to telling the backstory of what happened to Freddy and his history with these kids.  This wasn’t entirely a bad thing, but I felt like they should have played it a little less.  A big complaint of mine is that the deaths are pretty unoriginal.  All horror fans, especially Freddy fans, love unique kills and these are pretty un-unique.  I mean everyone remembers the incredible bed scene in the original Nightmare.  There’s nothing in this film that even holds a candle to that.

I guess I’ll take a little bit of time and talk about the acting.  Honestly the casting here was pretty decent.  We spend 90% of the film with Mara, Gallner, and Haley and all three are good actors.  Mara hasn’t done much to write home about yet, but I still have high hopes as she’s starring in the upcoming The Social Network from Aaron Sorkin.  She does a decent job but is no scream queen and definitely couldn’t fill Langenkamp’s shoes.  I was pretty shocked to see Kyle Gallner as an actual lead.  I liked that he was cast that way and they didn’t try to fill the male role with some jock guy (although an attempt is poorly made to make his character a jock very briefly).  I’ve been a fan of Gallner since his brilliant stint on Veronica Mars and hopefully he gets better roles after this.  And finally we have Jackie Earle Haley who is a wonderful actor who has done some good stuff.  But you could have cast anyone here and it’d be wrong.  Robert Englund is Freddy Krueger.  That’s the way it is.  You can’t replace him.  He wasn’t just a man in a mask like so many other slashers, it was the personality he brought to the role that helped make Freddy so iconic in the first place and then kept audiences coming back for more.  In fact here they purposely made an effort to try and make Freddy “darker”, which is retarded.  Freddy is already a very dark character when you think about him, but these movies are supposed to be fun.  I want the quips, the original kills that could only happen in a nightmare, and everything we equate with this series.  None of which is found here (also sorry guys no nudity either).

Really I cannot in good conscience recommend paying money to see this.  In fact the opposite.  I suggest instead of going out and seeing this you stay in and watch the original.  It’s much better, and you can buy a copy on dvd for next to nothing, or if you’re so inclined they just re-released it on Blu-ray, and they even have all the original movies up to Freddy vs Jason in a great pack for $40.  So why don’t you enjoy the original over this mess?