A Nightmare On Elm Street Review

• 8th Nov 2010

One of my friends told me that when she was younger, she had to run and get a hug from her mum after seeing a magazine cover in a newsagents with Freddy Kruger on it. He is, to use a much overused word, an iconic horror character, up there with Jason, Michael Myers and Leatherface, despite the fact that the myriad of sequels have turned him into a campy villain, delivering one-liners like a disfigured Roger Moore. The aim of this reboot is to make Freddy scary again. And does it work? No, not really.

The story sticks closely to the 1984 original; Freddy Kruger returns from the dead to terrorise the dreams of the children of the vigilante parents who killed him in a fire. There is the addition of some back-story for Freddy, alongside the new concept of micro-naps – sporadic episodes of dreaming while still awake. This ought to amp up the tension – after all Freddy can now pop up anytime, anywhere – but the filmmakers don’t capitalise on this and the nubile young cast fail to excite as they stumble from bland scene to bland scene. Most of them seem like they actually were asleep for the filming.

Jackie Earle Haley (best known as Rorschach in Watchmen) fills Robert Eungland’s shoes admirably, providing a more malevolent, less flamboyant Freddie in some pretty nasty (and CGI-enhanced) make up. The backstory changes him from child killer in the original to paedophile less successfully – yes, it makes him more unpleasant, but not more frightening.

The dreamscapes are slickly realised (director Samuel Bayer’s music video background serving him well), and with the advent of CGI and other technology that wasn’t available to Wes Craven do provide a genuinely spooky backdrop. But that’s pretty much where the scares end. Although the original may look cheesy nowadays, it still boasts memorable set pieces (like Johnny Depp being eaten by his bed); the reboot lacks anything like that and is instantly forgettable. A disappointingly damp squib.

Emma Wilkin