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Don't Fall Asleep Isn't A Warning, It's A Plea! (2010 Remake Review)

So as I'd hoped and made a short-term goal of, I finally got to see a Nightmare on Elm Street film in theaters, and as an opening midnight screening. I was so eager to see it, I hopped on my bicycle and headed toward the theater at 10:30pm and sat on a bench by the ticket taker's podium and chatted with a few other fans of Freddy who themselves made a fan film last year. Finally the theater crew was finished preparing the screening room and the ticket taker finally started taking tickets. I was the first one in line and I made a Freddy-esque power-walk to the end of the hall to the screening room and picked a middle seat about fourth from the back row so I wouldn't need to move my head around to see the whole screen. A little chat here and there and then previes and finally, the New Line Cinema logo made it's appearance on the screen and everybody hushed.



As the opening credits went piece by piece on screen and the images during the sequence set a good atmosphere with images of children's toys, chalk drawings and the like juxtaposed with them being burned in the next cut. Now that I think of it, it came off as a creepy homage to the opening titles of Terminator 2, in which has been thought of by Wes Craven to pay homage to the original Nightmare with the antagonist walking through bars. Anyway, like the original, the opening scene immediately is a nightmare sequence. Our introducing character wakes up after being lightly wounded, and then we meet all of our main characters at once, as they are all in the Springwood Diner, which is where our beloved Nancy works at after school. After introductions and a tiny bit of dialogue is made, we find that our film's first dreamer has already learned that he must stay awake, and arms himself in the event that he nods off. As you can guess, he does, and fails to defend himself and dies a gruesome apparent suicide in front of one of the other characters. It's only after this much that we see the movie's title and notes from the original theme composed by Charles Bernstein are heard. I was so happy to hear that little bit of Freddy's theme, I ghed a happy gh and said out loud "oh thank god they kept that in". Anywho, rather than give a full synops of the details of the movie, let me lay it out like this. The first few kills are pretty well executed, and there are clear as well as a few subtle nods to the entire series, focung more on the original.

Every actor played their part well, but sadly the scriptwriting as well as a few moments of bad CGI take you out of the experience. I'm not going to knock the actors like everyone else, being somewhat of one myself, I know that they represent their characters to the best of their abilities, but under the direction of a script and a director. If you have a bad script, and an unenthuastic/inexperienced film director, you can only do so much to make your character stand out. And like you'll see in many other more better known blogs and movie review tes, the characters weren't very interesting, and had little to no development. The new story including the backstory of Freddy Krueger was so poorly written that there wasn't even a valid reason for Freddy to have a razor-fingered glove in the first place nce he was a child-molesting gardener for the preschool he worked and lived at . He loved his kids, and the parents thought well of him until they noticed some bad gns including clawmarks on at least one of the kids' back. I'm sorry, but my little tidbit of knowledge regarding pedophiles is that they try to keep what they do a secret. So why in the world would you wear a fucking razor-fingered glove to touch kids with? I mean seriously? why the fuck would you need such a thing if you're not going to use it as a weapon? There's also a reference to the story of the Pied Piper, which if given enough thought doesn't make total sense because in that story, he'd done a service and wasn't paid/appreciated, so he took the children away. Freddy on the other hand, was found out, left town before any kind of confrontation/legal process could be made against him, was hunted down, and burned alive by the mob of angry parents. They tried to cover it up, but didn't bother destroying any crucial evidence. Rather a class photo is hidden under a dresser drawer, and a cut up dress is stored in a box in the attic. The kids don't even remember preschool/the age of five, which is weird because while I don't remember all of the details, I remember being five and in school and so on. But these kids don't remember squat. So the search for information kickstarts and it's learned that Freddy isn't bound to Elm Street OR Springwood. He goes after everyone who was in that year of preschool prior to him being found out.

Now here's one thing you've got to understand before you nitpick: When Nancy is looking at web videos of a vlogger whose been encountering Freddy in his dreams, the te obviously doesn't work like youtube, as you see a glimpse of his head smashing into the computer, making most people think "don't you need to click an upload button?" Not if the te operates like Blogstar, the now defunct Operator11, and so on that records while streaming live. I used to have a show on Operator11 and my bad wifi gnal would cut me off but I could go back and see the whole thing up to the point that the gnal was lost. So that complaint can be put to rest. The dream sequences are pretty well done, but again, unless the place where he was burned alive was a boiler room , there's no point in there being one in the dream sequences. It cut out the over the top fantastical dreamscapes and went more realistic with things like suddenly being in a completely different setting by taking a few steps and turning around to look back. Freddy does have a few one liners that made some people laugh, even if it wasn't intended to do so. Everyone is commenting on the look of Freddy's makeup, so here's my two cents: It is more realistic to an actual burn victim as they had intended to do so. I've known one myself in elementary school. It's not a pretty ght. Say what you want about whether you like it or don't, but at the end of the day, it is more visually accurate than previous incarnations. Of course I'll always remember Freddy as he was when Robert Englund portrayed him, but THIS IS A REBOOT FOR A NEW GENERATION. You can't expect Robert to just keep playing Freddy until he dies. Bedes, if you really like him, you should watch his other movies and see what else he can do. 2001 Maniacs was wonderfully funny with genuinely disturbing and gory imagery.

Jackie Earl Haley's Freddy was okay. He was really pissed off and sadistic, he had character, but he had no clear vengeance plot save for one that was misplaced at the kids

for telling on him when the parents were the ones that burned him without even giving him due process. Pervyness and the occaonal Rorschach voice ade, Jackie made a good Freddy for how he was written.

The micronaps were a neat new addition, though while it made our protagonists more vulnerable, it took away the suspense of trying to stay awake as time went on, and it took away even more mystery than there already was absent from the story. I hate to compare the original with the remake as it's a cheap shot and a douche move. But in the original, there were parts where you had to figure out for yourself that the character was dreaming. In this one you're just left going, "ah, micronap."

I've already discussed my displeasure with making Freddy into a sexual deviant, which was part of what I didn't like about Freddy Vs. Jason as well. So I'm not going to repeat myself with that. So just click the underlined text above if you want my two cents on that. On a related note, there's a period of time where it's brought into question about whether or not he really did molest the kids. But then that cliffhanger is killed with NSFW polaroids. That just made the questioning seem pointless to kill it so suddenly and clearly. In this movie, after so much time being awake, the body shuts down into a coma, which is what Freddy says he intended to do with Nancy, so he bacally could have his way with her in her indefinitely lasting dream. But then, he goes to make a killing blow to her heart. So wait a second, why not have just killed her during any other dream encounter if he was just going to "play" with her while she lay dying for a few minutes? And then how they kill Freddy is so much like how he is dispatched in Freddy Vs. Jason. Bring him into the real world, and cutting him up with a long blade, after making a cutesy little phrase about being in the other world, ended with "bitch." I hated that ending to Freddy in FvJ, and I hate it in this one too. It's so quick and cheap, and it's not meant for large scale mainstream horror like this. The actual ending ending of the movie was pretty predictable in the sense that it left an opening for a sequel, but at the same time it could just stand alone with a oh shit/ooh haha ending.

Overall, I give the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street a score of 2/5. But this is just my own opinion. For those who have also seen it, what did you think?

I enjoyed it, in fact I thought it was better than 4,5, Freddy's dead, and new nightmare they brought Freddy's creepiness back and added a new twist and craven was gonna make Kruger a pedophile but he scrapped it because of the controversy it might of caused.

I enjoyed it, in fact I thought it was better than 4,5, Freddy's dead, and new nightmare they brought Freddy's creepiness back and added a new twist and craven was gonna make Kruger a pedophile but he scrapped it because of the controversy it might of caused. I definitely liked it better than Freddy's dead and 5, maybe 4 as well but I like New Nightmare way more than the remake. They were originally going to model the remake freddy's outfit after New Nightmare but scraped it for some reason. If it were up to me I would have had Jackie wear a Freddy sweater with the all red sleeves like the original, now that would have been bad ass!

Nice post...