DVD Reviews

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) – Blu-ray Review

By Jeff Swindoll Oct 7, 2010, 19:41 GMT

$Five teenage friends living on one street all dream of a sinister man with a disfigured face, a frightening voice and a gardener\'s glove with knives for fingers. One by one, he terrorizes them within their dreams--where the rules are his and the only way out is to wake up. But when one among them dies, they soon realize that what happens in their dreams happens for real and the$

Five teenage friends living on one street all dream of a sinister man with a disfigured face, a frightening voice and a gardener\'s glove with knives for fingers. One by one, he terrorizes them within their dreams--where the rules are his and the only way out is to wake up. But when one among them dies, they soon realize that what happens in their dreams happens for real and the ...more

Freddy Krueger is back, but in a remake not another adventure of Robert Englund (he did give his blessing to his replacement though).

I wasn’t thrilled to hear that it was being remade, but I got interested when Jackie Earle Haley was cast as Freddy.

However, I’m still mulling over my reaction after seeing the film. This ain’t the Freddy we grew up with.

A group of teenagers, Nancy (Rooney Mara), Kris (Katie Cassidy), Dean (Kellan Lutz), Jesse (Thomas Dekker), and Quentin (Kyle Gallner), start dreaming about a burn scarred killer called Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley).

They band together the best they can to stay awake because when Freddy kills you in your dreams with his razor-tipped glove you die in reality. As they drop one by one, they eventually tell their parents, Quentin’s dad Alan (Clancy Brown) and Nancy’s mom Gwen (Connie Britton), about the killer of their dreams and they feign ignorance of him but we know that they know more than they’re telling.

The remaining teens think that maybe they deserve their fate as Freddy could’ve been wrongly accused, but they’ll have to stay alive till morning to escape the vengeful nightmare.

Freddy Krueger became a cult figure. He started his nightmarish reign in Wes Craven’s 1984 original, which spawned numerous sequels. Somewhere along the line (thanks to toys, comics, and a variety of other merchandising), the fact that he was a child molester got lost.

He was also a villain that you loved to hate as Robert Englund, in his career defining role, injected enough humor that you may have actually been cheering the killer on or at least waiting for the next one-liner (it is just a movie after all… or is it [cue Nightmare on Elm Street theme and creepy kids jump roping]).

I wasn’t too sure about remaking that ghoul of my youth, especially since it may have been PG-13’d. However, when Jackie Earle Haley was cast I at least had a curiosity as to what they’d do with him. I’ve now watched the movie I’m a bit torn.

Jackie Earle Haley does a fine job, but he’s not playing the Freddy that we all know and love. In fact, it’s very hard to even like him. Not that’s a problem with a burnt child molester, but that aspect of the nightmare bogeyman is so accentuated that it makes you grimace.

Haley plays him with a lizard-like malevolence and the makeup is more based on real life burn victims than the original. I wasn’t expecting a cuddly Krueger but when Haley starts hitting on the elder Nancy it has more of a “ewwwww” factor than Englund.

The young cast is decent enough but they don’t make the impression that the original did. You just wait for them to fall to Freddy’s glove. More Clancy Brown wouldn’t have hurt either.

The movie does get Freddy’s look down, fedora, red/green sweater, and glove, and recreates several big scenes from the original (glove in bathtub, etc.) but they don’t have the same spirit.

They do try and do some different or artistic things. I was really interested in the concept of microsleep and that Freddy will get you not matter what. I also liked the bedroom snow and the pharmacy scene that keeps switching between it and Freddy’s boiler room.

I can’t fault the filmmakers for trying to add new things to the film. The picture also looks glossy and expensive, but it seems the soul is not there. I don’t know that what enamored us about the original has been captured.

Nightmare on Elm Street is presented in a pristine 1080p high definition transfer (2.40:1). Special features include “WB Maniacal Movie Mode” that provides picture-in-picture making of material. You can also play the 20 minutes of “Focus Point” separately or they pop up during the mode. The 14 minute “Freddy Reborn” discusses how this Freddy and our new one differ.

You get a 1 minute alternate opening, 1 minute deleted “road” scene, and a 6 minute alternate ending (that interestingly has Haley doing it sans burn makeup). Disc two is a DVD/Digital copy.

I can’t honestly say that I hated the remake, but I can honestly say that I preferred the original (this is usually the case with remakes anyway). I’ve seem some vitriol aimed at the film online, but there was some touches (pharmacy, microsleep) that interested me.

I also don’t want to be too hard on Haley since I like him as an actor, but when Englund says “I’m your boyfriend now” we laugh. When Haley’s Krueger does it, it creeped me out – not in a good way (that may be what the filmmakers were going for though).