Oh, god. Oh god oh god oh god. Could this have been done with any less care? Or with any less respect for the film it's based on? I seriously doubt it. Platinum Dunes, the production company of satan himself (Michael Bay), tend to specialise in taking other people's ideas, making photocopies and doodling penises on them. Their most recent product to hit the cinemas is a remake of Wes Craven's seminal 1984 feature about a group of teenagers being killed in their sleep by a mysterious dream stalker called Freddy Krueger. The first was a film made by a man who understands horror aesthetic, horror logic and creating suspense, whereas this one was made by Samuel Bayer, director of Nirvana videos, a man who understands how to make Kurt Cobain look good with wet hair. Both films have the exact same premise, and yet could not be more different. The problem is, that the first one is such a good template that this version felt it had to rewrite the rules in order to produce something different. Its attempts to be 'different' do not work on any level.
Let's analyse this logically, and try not to compare the remake to the original every five seconds and explain why it just doesn't work as a stand-alone film, let alone a remake. I will mention however that in the original, the entire premise is explained clearly, creepily and within about 10 minutes. You understand what is going on, why and yet enough is not explained to keep you interested. The remake fails to establish the characters to a point that I wasn't aware one of the leads actually turned up in the prologue. She was that important, apparently. After introducing this mish-mash of people, the film unleashes Freddy and the dreams upon us. Now, the tension of the original was the 'oh god, don't fall asleep! Don't fall asleep!' aspect of things, and there was a genuine sense of horror pervading. In this one, the kids fall asleep with such monotonous regularity that you'd think they were all narcoleptic, and there is a new concept of 'micro-naps' that renders all tension pointless. We're told it's basically sleeping for a microsecond, so you sort of dream while awake. Oh, brilliant. So they're unsafe awake and sleeping. What's the point in having a serial-killer whose whole mandate is that he can only kill you in your dreams if he can kill you awake and asleep?
'Bayer! See me after class!'
So as well as this total misunderstanding of what made the original work, there is also Freddie himself to consider. Jackie Earle Haley is a good actor, and I think he's an interesting piece of work – but this was not a good franchise for him to choose. It's not that the performance is bad, but it's the wrong kind of performance. A lot of critics praised the decision to turn Freddy into a malevolent nasty old man as opposed to the rather wicked and twisted dream demon from the original franchise, which after six sequels was pretty much driven into the dirt. His wicked old man routine unfortunately is not scary. I was never at any point scared of him. He was just...a big ol' perv, really.
The backstory is supposed to enhance Freddy, but it is used totally inappropriately and the big 'revelations' and 'shock twist' we're supposed to experience are totally undermined by our experience of what came before it. Eric Heisserer and Wesley Strick wrote this, so be sure to hunt them down and throw bricks through their windows. The film's pace is jumbled, constantly flip-flopping between dream states and reality with little care or interest. To say the dreams feel like 'filler' is perhaps to understate the issue. One girl, Chris (Katie Cassidy) dreams that she goes into the attic, looks around and goes back to her bedroom. Seriously. The best dreams are actually pretty creepy...oh sorry, I just gave the filmmakers too much credit. They're all stolen from the original but not done as well.
With the exception of Clancy Brown ('MEDIC!' guy from Starship Troopers) and Haley, nobody else seems to be making any effort at all. The teens all look bored as hell, with the kid from Haunting in Connecticut, Kyle Gallner, basically just looking exhausted (and not in a good way) and Rooney Mara as Nancy looks as if she'd rather be in another film. Some of the age casting is pretty stretched too. Katie Cassidy and her mother look barely two years apart in age, and she's supposed to be in high school. High-school for god's sake!
Stupid teenagers: Getting slaughtered for your pleasure since 1979.
Visually, the film is a write-off too. It's all ugly linoleum and vomit green, and the cutting is flat. One other thing: orchestral stings should be used sparingly for scares. In order to guarantee making us jump, the filmmakers have shoved in orchestral stings every time anything happens. It makes you jump, yes but so could suddenly turning up the television volume. It makes you jump, but it isn't scary.
Rounding up, the film is a disaster. A careless knock-off of a brilliant horror film. I guess all we have to do is wait to see just how badly they do The Birds. I for one am assuming a crash position now.
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