A Nightmare on Elm Street Review

I believe that remakes should be held up to a higher standard than the original work. Since most of the creative burden has been lifted from its shoulders, it should be able to travel further than before or at least move unfettered in a new direction. In the case of movies, the original production team created the concept, plotted the story, introduced the characters and defined the fictional universe. That should leave the remake free to explore new avenues, look at those concepts from different angles, reshift the focus onto other characters, play with our expectations and redefine that fictional universe. Even removing ourselves from a creative/artistic mandate and looking purely at entertainment value, nobody wants to see the same tired concept regurgitated ad nauseam and remakes are, by their very existence, derivative. Therefore, they have an obligation to add something meaningful to an old premise, to reframe the original concept in an interesting way.

The people behind the latest iteration of A Nightmare on Elm Street would seem to disagree with me, though, favoring a bland and lifeless rehash of the original with nothing new to substantiate itself. Now, I’m not actually against remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street. In fact, I think that if you have to make another movie depicting the wacky murderous hijinks of Freddy Krueger, then a remake is better than another sequel because the original Nightmare series was well and truly concluded. Freddy’s Dead killed the title character quite thoroughly and New Nightmare laid his legacy to rest. A sequel would simply cheapen a series that ended on just the right note.

And remaking isn’t an inherently invalid approach to things, especially if done right. I would argue that the new version of Battlestar Galactica has managed to maximize the original show’s premise in ways a sixties sci-fi series just couldn’t and the various versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers create an interesting picture of the concerns and fears of different parts of twentieth century America. So, yes, remaking can work and rebooting the Nightmare  franchise is definitely the way to go. Just imagine the movie that a capable director — free of all restrictions — could squeeze out of this idea. Advances in CGI technology could allow some truly remarkable realizations of the surrealist potential inherent in the premise, creating an intensely visual and psychological experience in way the eighties original couldn’t achieve. Oh, yes, there are definite possibilities in this.

But all we get is just another slasher movie.

The original was of course just a slasher movie, but one thing it did have over others of its kind was an imaginative concept behind it. The dream stalker idea was a unique twist on the traditional formula and the kids’ attempts to stay awake introduced a different kind of tension beyond the usual running and screaming. Even Freddy’s weapon of choice was more distinctive than any of his equally iconic peers. This new movie retains all of the faults of the original – the shaky acting and dialogue, the fake gore and the barebones plot – as well as its more redeeming elements. But the difference – and this really is a major distinction – is that those elements aren’t new anymore.

This is the issue with remakes. Beyond the almost criminal lack of creative effort they can get away with, they run the risk of just being boring. The dream stalker idea isn’t as impressive now as it used to be and it isn’t enough on its own anymore. It has become so mundane that even the characters in this remake seem unimpressed by the realization that someone can actually kill them in their dreams (a realization they accept far too easily, I think). For all their faults, the various Nightmare sequels knew this. The production teams behind them understood that they couldn’t just rely on the fundamentals over and over again; they needed to keep things fresh. As the series progressed, then, we saw less of Freddy chasing kids down in their dreams and an increase in more distinctive, more personalized kills. He taunted them with their phobias, tortured them with their past traumas and used their own desires against them. Each character was given a quirk, flaw or foible and when Freddy finally came for them, he didn’t just slice them with his glove, he killed them with a part of themselves.

But the characters in this remake have no sense of self, no passions and no personalities. They have no unique quirks, flaws or foibles and they all share the same past trauma. And this trauma is supposed to be a mystery throughout the movie, so it only plays a direct role in events when Freddy starts hounding his final prey. Prior to that, the deaths are generic runarounds, culminating in a teenager getting stabbed. And the mystery that binds them together and binds them to Freddy isn’t really all that mysterious. If you’ve seen the previous movies, there’s nothing terribly revelatory about the big reveal at the end. You already know how Freddy died; the why is slightly altered, but underdeveloped and occasionally contradictory. Without giving too much away, Freddy’s motives in the past don’t seem to mesh with his motives in the present. This is a minor – and easily rationalized – grievance and the new motive effectively ties his modern victims to his past evils, but their responses and reactions aren’t properly developed; in fact, for the most part, they’re nonexistent.

And then there’s also the issue that this big shocking revelation is shockingly revealed to us three times. The first time, I guess we’re not supposed to believe it. I don’t know why we shouldn’t believe it; it seems to explain everything rather succinctly. But when we get around to the second time this big secret is revealed, we find out that the kids apparently didn’t believe it the first time they heard it. Why? I don’t know. But if you’re keeping track at home, modern day teenagers are apparently willing to believe that someone is stalking and killing them in their dreams and they aren’t too surprised to learn that their parents murdered a man in cold blood, but the reason why they murdered him… that’s asking too much.

But then we get around to the third shocking revelation (which takes place in Freddy’s secret dungeon that no one was ever able to find because apparently they never thought to take a cursory look around his room) and we discover photographs that confirm the big secret we already knew for about an hour and the kids finally have an emotional reaction to their shared past trauma. This is a reaction that really should have occurred after the first reveal, but then you know how kids are. They’re so desensitized to everything anymore. I blame it on all the horror movies. Actually, if you really want to be snooty about this, you can look at the photo scene as reflective of the modern horror genre that focuses on the explicit over the implicit. According to this movie, the implication of their past with Freddy isn’t enough to scare these kids, they actually have to see it to be affected. Personally, I think the disjointedness this introduces into the narrative is sufficient as a counterargument.

But anyway, because the movie doesn’t reveal any of this to us – or at least refuses to acknowledge that it revealed any of this to us – until the very end and because none of these kids has any unique or interesting personality traits, Freddy’s kills are just as depersonalized as they were in the original movie. There is one semi-unique twist in “micro-naps,” which are moments of sleep where the characters don’t realize they’re sleeping. These enable a sort of “what is real and what is a dream?” confusion and that’s nifty, but underutilized… and not exactly new. The fifth Nightmare movie, The Dream Child, had a similar mechanic. It explained it differently, but the idea of the main character slipping into and out of Freddy’s world uncontrollably was already done and done better. This is because The Dream Child was completely focused on this idea; it was the whole point of the movie. The remake, though, is too busy teasing us with a backstory we already know to play around with micro-naps in any significant way. It really shouldn’t be hard to surpass The Dream Child, but this remake fails quite spectacularly in its attempt.

But then, it’s not trying to surpass The Dream Child; it’s trying to bring the Nightmare franchise back to its roots – both narratively and creatively, it would seem. And I could complain that actually seeing the parents kill Freddy isn’t as effective as the eerie scene where Nancy’s mother tells her about it or that the remake doesn’t faithfully recapture the original movie, but I won’t bother because there’s no reason it should. It should be trying to do something new with the franchise, starting over and traveling in an unexpected direction while continuing to evolve the premise closer to real sophistication. After all, like I said, the original series ran its course, from slasher movie to campy horror and eventually reaching its zenith in New Nightmare. It’s time to see where else it can go. But this remake is aimless. Far from continuing the conceptual evolution of the Nightmare franchise, it just makes it gorier. It doesn’t so much return the series to its roots as cause it to regress.

It doesn’t even recreate the most important element of the first movie, the one reason everybody elevates it over all of its sequels: it was scary.

Well, at least it was trying to be scary. But modern slasher movies aren’t even doing that anymore. They create no tension, no atmosphere and the CGI gore leads to deaths that are just too ridiculous to be frightening. The best this movie – and most of its contemporaries – can achieve is a ridiculous abundance of jump scares. You know those moments where some random guy jumps out at the camera, the audience is briefly startled, but then quickly returns to texting their friends? Yeah, there are a lot of those. Say what you will about old slasher movies, the good ones at least knew how to scare people. But this modern generation just leeches off the success of those old movies, while understanding nothing about what made them successful in the first place.

And so now I want to talk about Platinum Dunes, the production company responsible for the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Their other releases include the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, the Amityville Horror remake, the Friday the 13th remake, the Hitcher remake and very little else. Noticing a pattern? This is a company that exists almost exclusively to sponge off the creative efforts of others. They’re barnacles on the backside of the entertainment industry, feeding on loose fragments of imagination because they have none of their own. I have traditionally been happy to avoid their efforts – at least in theatres – but I’ve always held a certain affection for the Nightmare series, so I took the chance I would get something more this time. I didn’t. The special effects look okay and Jackie Earle Haley performs well enough in an unenviable role, but the plot is vapid, the characters drab and the twists inexplicably straight. A Nightmare on Elm Street is just the latest victim of a movie industry so bereft of originality that it allows parasites like Platinum Dunes to feast on the desiccated husk of its better days.

And, yes, you could say that the original Nightmare on Elm Street was just a slasher movie, that it was no testament to the artistic value of cinematic expression. And you’d be right, it wasn’t. But why does that make this okay? It doesn’t matter if the original work was a drama, a biopic, a horror movie, a slasher movie, a mystery, a fantasy, a western or even an intricately plotted porno because it was still original. Someone took the time to create it, to conceive their own idea and then to express it the best way they knew how. And that is a hell of a lot more than you can say about the Platinum Dunes remakes. You don’t have to like the original work, you don’t even have to respect the efforts of those involved, but you at least have to give them credit for being courteous enough to come up with their own idea, rather than siphon someone else’s for a quick buck. And again, yes, that is and always has been the way of things. Movie studios exist to make money, I know that. And I realize that in the unending war between art and commerce, companies like Platinum Dunes proudly wave their standards in support of the latter; I get that, but I see no reason to encourage it.

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