ScreenWize

Another week, another remake from an uninspired, grave-robbing Hollywood. Frankly, I don’t see why I should put any effort into this review when Hollywood has quite obviously given up. I’m tempted to just cut and paste my review for the recent Friday 13th remake and change the names of the actors. This time the franchise being disinterred is Wes Craven’s inventive 80s horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. This time around, though, it’s easy on the invention. No surprises then that the producer is irony-free Michael Bay, the man who ruined Transformers.

The story of A Nightmare on Elm Street, for those who missed popular culture for the past thirty years, follows a group of young teens with apparently nothing in common who find themselves all sharing similar motifs in their dreams. Their dreams, however, take a nasty turn when the common character, a burned and disfigured man with a striped sweater, fedora and knives for fingers, starts slashing. The man is Freddy Krueger, the nightmare of every parent with children in daycare, and he has found a way to come back and seek his revenge. Freddy’s actual crimes were glossed over in the original film, which made him a more enigmatic character, played as high camp by character actor Robert Englund, and he became something of an antihero and a little bit of fun. In this outing, however, Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer’s screenplay pulls no punches about Freddy’s vicious sadism and paedophilia and, seriously, there’s no fun in that.

Known best for his role as the paedophile in the Kate Winslett film Little Children, Jackie Earl Hayley is terrific casting as Freddy. He does menacing evil very well, and at least it is a different and original take on the character. The film does have the benefit of CGI to render some of the more inventive nightmare sequences, and some very gruesome make-up for Freddy. Director Samuel Bayer comes from an impressive career directing music videos and predictably, the film looks fantastic but lacks an emotional core.

The young cast of Hollywood B-listers, including Thomas Dekker from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Vampire-turned-underpants-model Kellan Lutz all give fine, forgettable performances. Johnny Depp had his start in the original films, but judging from the evidence here, I don’t think anyone involved here will be troubling him any time soon. Just give up already.

Rating:

CK

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon