"Just don't fall asleep. If you die in your dreams, you die for real." - Jesse
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) centers around the dream entity that is Freddy Krueger. He was a child molester at a preschool called Badham Preschool. A groups of parents burned him alive in the boiler room. They try to forget and move on from it. Freddy stays away until the kids are in high school. It centers around a group of kids; Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara), Kris Fowler (Katie Cassidy), Jesse Braun (Thomas Dekker), Dean Russell (Kullen Lutz), and Quentin Smith (Kyle Gallenr), whose parents are responsible for murdering this guy. The first to go is Dean and that starts a chain reaction where one by one each of the elm street children start dying. Typical Nightmare movie.
Honestly, this NOT my favorite movie. I've just re-watched it recently and I still don't get it. So I think I'm going to just talk about the logistics of the film rather than break down the plot line, because it's EXACTLY the same as the original.
Let's start with the lead, Freddy Krueger played okay by Jackie Earle Haley. I honestly think they should have gotten someone better. I mean he was okay, but I just fell that he was trying way too hard to be Robert Englund.
I honestly think that if he took on a completely new persona making Freddy scary again, it would have been a more interesting movie. Instead, it appeared he tried to mimic Robert Englund's performance. Seriously? They had the perfect opportunity to reinvent Freddy, but they failed, miserably.
The make-up effects were also bad. He looked more like melted plastic rather than a burnt face. I believe the majority was CG. Like why? I'm sure you could have done a cast of his face and come up with an actual mask instead of using something computer generated. I mean OG Freddy didn't have that. Englund sat for 6+ hours during those long make-up sessions as they applied the mask piece by piece. I think that's mainly the problem with effects, it's so much cheaper to use CG rather than something that's practical.
When you creating a remake, it should not look anything like the original. This one recreated almost every key scene from the original. Let's list them:
Tina was murdered in her sleep with 4 claw marks down her torso. She was also dragged along the ceiling and fell on to the bed splatting blood all over the place.
Kris's was a little stranger. She was sliced in the torso with 4 claws, tossed about the room and fell on the bed. There's wasn't as much blood in the scene. Sound familiar?
Tina's death was much more impactful, because she is the false lead. You think she's going to be the one to survive and she is our final girl. This one just felt like a cop-out.
2. Nancy's Bath: 84' vs 10'
In 1984, Nancy decides to take a calming bath. She ends up dozing off in the bath tub; because she is so tired. The first thing you see is Freddy's glove coming up from the water, but she is jerked awake by her mother's knocking. Eventually mom goes away, Nancy drifts off to sleep, and then she gets sucked into a whole in the bathtub. She struggles a bit and then she finally gets out of the bathtub. Now that I think about it, Nancy's death in the original is kind of foreshadowing how Glen dies in the movie...interesting...
In 2010, Nancy takes a bath to relax herself before bed. Guess what happens? Yeah a glove comes up from the bathtub. I think an "alarm" wakes her up, she gets out, dresses; and returns to her room. Now she is transformed into a "dream like" state where she is standing outside a preschool (ummm). She comes in contact with Freddy and before she "dies" her phone rings waking her up in the bathtub.
3. Tina's Bodybag vs Kris' Bodybag
In 1984, Nancy is in her English class. She falls asleep and when she wakes, she sees her best friend calling to her in a clear bodybag. Nancy goes and follows her. She sees her laying on the ground in the hallway, her legs get picked up by some invisible figure and dragged down the hallway.
In 2010, I'm not even going to say it. It's exactly the same!! Nancy looks down the hallway to see Kris being dragged in a clear bodybag (which they don't even use anymore, by the way) down the hallway.
4. Rod's Death vs. Jesse's Death
While both of their deaths were different, they were both killed in a jail cell. Rod was hanged by his own sheets, which kind of witnessed by one of the officers.
Jesse's was a little bit more bizarre, because not only did he have a cellmate, but there was also video footage of what happened. How you explain that, I don't know.
5. Freddy's One Liners
Robert Englund was famous for creating such memorable lines from the Nightmare series. One in particular was "Welcome to Primetime, Bitch;" which is probably one his most famous. He had a way of delivering them, which made you feel uneasy at times.
Jackie Earl Haley doesn't have that many memorable lines from what I recall. Aside from in the scene to the right, where he says on line that sounded oddly familiar (like everything else in this movie). As Nancy is running the hallway, she starts sinking in a lot of blood (what is it with Warner Bros and blood? They just love it. I mean there was a TON of it in It Chapter 1 and 2). This is almost similar to Nancy getting stuck on the stairs as she attempted to run from Freddy after Rod died. Anyway, as she is slowly sinking in this floor, Freddy says, "How's this for a wet dream?" Yeah that line was already used for ANOES Part 4: word for word too.
One final thing I'll say and I really wish this wasn't the main plot point of the movie is the child sexual assaults. I honestly think they should have made that as more of a subtext rather than it being in your face. For me, it seemed like that was their main selling point for the movie. The original had it placed sort of in the background, mainly because what was going on in the media at that time; but it also made the movie scarier.
I'm not the only one who felt this was a complete betrayal on Warner Bros part for making a subpar Nightmare movie. Most of the producers and execs thought that it could have made better. They felt the storyline was ruined by this film. Oh interesting fact, in the credits, it lists Robert Shaye as Producer (since he produced the original and sequels), however he had nothing to do with this movie. He is just there in name only. This just pisses me off. When New Line and Warner Bros merged, they literally forced Robert Shaye out of his office after 4 decades. He literally built New Line and it makes his name being tied to this project the biggest F-U I've ever seen.
Anyway, I recommend checking out the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Nightmare Legacy. It pretty much covers the entire Nightmare series including the 2010 remake.
This movie was released on April 30th, 2010. Whoa I just realized that this movie is now 10 years old and it did not age well. Upon its release, it made 115.6million dollars in the box office on a 35 million dollar budget. It was the highest grossing film in the franchise, however, it was met with some really bad reviews.
So, yeah this concludes the Nightmare on Elm Street series. I mean the remake wasn't so bad. It just wasn't the greatest remake ever made. Honestly I think they should try again and see if they can make Freddy scary again like they did with Pennywise.
IMDB: 5.2/10 || Rotten Tomatoes: 15%
Well regardless it was an interesting little experiment and if they ever attempt it again, they should make it better. Just saying.
I recommend checking it out for curiosity sake.
Sleep Tight,
A Nightmare on Movie Night
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