Film Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Long before economic recession made "belt-tightening" fashionable, Hollywood had already discovered the virtues of cost-cutting—at least where screenplays were concerned. Why pay writers for original ideas when one can simply recycle scripts from decades past? This philosophy extends even to genre classics, as demonstrated by this entirely redundant remake of Wes Craven's 1984 horror landmark.
The plot remains stubbornly faithful to the original: teenagers Dean, Kris, Jesse, Nancy, and Quentin find themselves stalked in their dreams by the disfigured serial killer Freddy Krueger, who possesses the terrifying ability to murder them in reality by attacking them during sleep. Yet whereas Craven's film transcended its modest budget through genuine invention, this modern iteration represents what might best be described as a poorly executed carbon copy—faithful in outline but drained of all vitality.
Director Samuel Bayer, whose prior experience consists largely of music videos, demonstrates little aptitude for cinematic storytelling. The remake commits the cardinal sin of being neither faithful enough to satisfy devotees of the original nor inventive enough to justify its existence. Unlike Gus Van Sant's controversial but at least formally interesting shot-for-shot Psycho remake, Bayer's effort lacks even academic curiosity. It is simply competent mediocrity rendered with all the passion of an assembly-line product.
The casting of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger ought to have been inspired—Haley being a genuinely accomplished character actor. Yet he is reduced here to a poor imitation of Robert Englund's iconic portrayal, all menace and no wit. Where Englund's original Freddy delighted in taunting his victims with black humour, Haley's interpretation feels leaden and one-dimensional. The actor works tremendously hard, but the material offers him no opportunity to transcend mere mimicry.
The young cast fares even worse. Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, and Thomas Dekker deliver performances so bland and uninspired that one struggles to remember their characters' names even whilst watching. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that any of these actors will follow Johnny Depp's trajectory from the original film to genuine stardom. They serve merely as photogenic cannon fodder, indistinguishable from the disposable teenagers populating countless other slasher films.
The screenplay by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer adds little beyond a few "socially relevant" variations on Freddy's backstory—half-hearted gestures toward contemporary resonance that feel grafted on rather than organic. Michael Bay's involvement as producer suggests the sort of slick, soulless product one might expect, yet even by those diminished standards this film disappoints.
Wes Craven, who created the original franchise and watched it become embedded in popular culture, had ample reason to disown this production. Where his 1984 film introduced genuinely bold concepts—the idea that one cannot escape a killer who attacks through sleep, the blurring of dream and reality—this remake offers only the hollow shell of those ideas, presented without imagination or understanding.
The 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street exemplifies the worst tendencies of contemporary Hollywood remaking: it assumes that younger audiences will part with their money for the same concepts that entranced their parents, whilst making no effort to earn that attention through craft or creativity. It is a film that justifies its title, though not in the manner its creators intended—this is indeed a nightmare, but one from which the viewer cannot wake quickly enough.
Rating: 2/10
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