Harefooted Halloween: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

What I Liked: Pass.

What I Didn’t Like: All.

Overall Impressions: The big question I kept asking myself while watching was “what was the drive behind this remake?”  And the only answer I can come up with is this was a pure cash grab.  To be clear not all remakes are inherently bad but there needs to be a reason to dig up the old material.  A new twist on the story, a bigger budget with more resources available, rearrangement of events, etc.  The 2010 Nightmare doesn’t do any of this.  The only thing is they employed a lot of CGI tricks to pump up the dream scenes and make the deaths gorier.

I don’t think Jackie Earle Haley (Alita: Battle Angel) is very good as Freddy Krueger either.  Part of it isn’t his fault because they CGI-ed his burnt face too much and the ADR for his voice doesn’t sound or line up quite right with what’s on screen.  Maybe it was intentional to make the voice sound detached from the body but I thought it came off more like a poor dub job.  Even with that Haley looks a bit too short in stature and he doesn’t seem totally comfortable with his knife glove.  The movements are sorta awkward like he didn’t want to copy Robert Englund but hadn’t figured out his own effective maneuvers yet.

It’s probably impossible to live up to Englund’s portrayal though.  Watching someone else attempt the role gave me a greater appreciation for his approach to the character.  He seems no natural in the part from the first moment and only got better as the series progressed.  Like I never thought about his movements or facial expressions until I had a comparison and realized Englund’s execution is so perfect I’ve never questioned it (again, I’m talking about the sheer physicality of the performance).  I’m not saying you can’t ever do the character again but it’s gonna be extremely tricky.

Anyway, this film is instantly forgettable.  There are too many callbacks to the original and no cool unique moments of its own.  Again, they’re just banking off name recognition and duping long time fans of the series.  This makes perfect sense considering this was the last of the Michael Bay produced horror reboots he did in the 2000’s which included The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher and Friday the 13^th.  And even though they all made a lot of money, including Nightmare, none are held in high regard.  In fact they’re pretty heavily disliked by most.  Don’t waste your time.