Jackie Earle Haley’s Your Boyfriend Now
It’s funny. I didn’t realize how much I liked the wisecracking trickster Freddy Krueger that Robert Englund played in the later Nightmare on Elm Street movies until I sat through the first terribly somber hour of the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake.
As Jackie Earle Haley’s Freddy Krueger slowly works his way through the all-you-can-eat buffet of teenage victims presented before him in director Samuel Bayer’s film, I started to grow a little bored.
Instead of the macabre antics and on-the-nose killer puns that had been the trademarks of the later Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, the new film featured a mostly silent but deadly killer who hid in the shadows — popping out only to utter something dreadfully threatening in a Christian Bale cancer voice before eviscerating his victim.
Now there is nothing wrong with a slow but steady pace in a horror film. Some of my favorite scary movies take their sweet time before getting to the good stuff. Setting the tone and building suspense is highly important.
Unfortunately, the remake’s writers’ need to sow the seeds of a mystery into a plot that stays largely faithful to the original 25+-year-old movie proves to be a mistake.
While this may be effective for teenage audiences who are new to the series and being introduced to Freddy Krueger for the first time, those of us who aren’t experiencing our first Nightmare on Elm Street rodeo will quickly grow tired of the dreary proceedings and begin to pine the Freddy Krueger of our youth — the one that would transform out of a television set or turn a helpless victim into a human meat puppet.
My biggest problem with the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake is the fact that it takes itself way too seriously — a problem I find repeated in far too many recent horror films.
There is completely too little levity — whether it is a bit of humor or a quiet character-driven scene designed to break the tension. It seems most modern horror films want to be a “non-stop roller coaster of terror.” Well, unless you are showing us something fresh and interesting, audiences will quickly grow bored of the same loud-noise jump scares being tossed at us like fish to a hungry sea lion.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is perhaps too faithful to the original film — with some scenes lifted directly from Wes Cravens 1984 hit. It’s the scenes that are tweaked — even slightly — into something fresh and heretofore unseen that prove the most effective. I’m all for staying true to the source material but I also don’t want to watch the same movie I’ve been seeing for years with only new, spiffier special effects to set it apart.
That being said, Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as Freddy Krueger really does work— especially towards the end when he is allowed to add a touch of personality to the monster.
As the film approaches its climax and Freddy Krueger begins to make jokes — albeit dark and borderline uncomfortable ones — I started to really enjoy myself and forget that I was watching a remake. Haley hits the nail on the head with his performance as Freddy Krueger. From his raspy, menacing voice to the amazing body movement and finger twitches he sprinkles into his delivery, his performance is the highlight of the film.
The cast of teenage victims, on the other hand, while turning in perfectly acceptable performances, do nothing to set themselves apart from the dozens of other kids Krueger has killed over the years. There is no real breakout performance from the cast of victims — no future scream queen or horror movie superstar in this disposable teenage wasteland.
Despite all of this, A Nightmare on Elm Street is definitely worth checking out — especially if you are a fan of the series. While a paint-by-numbers approach to the plot’s unraveling leaves the first half of the film a little dry, things pick up fast and heavy and by the time the film’s climax rolls around, the movie is moving pretty smoothly towards a satisfying climax.
