Jamie
Oh hi, I didn’t see you there. It’s me… Franchise Man. Now you might be thinking “Wow, a Nightmare on Elm Street film, this must be a delight for the likes of a Franchise Man.” It’s true, but comes with some reservations. Back when I was a Franchise Lad and had only taken in such horror fare as The Faculty, Scream, and Final Destination, I found A Nightmare on Elm Street to not only be the scariest of the big three horror franchises, but the best. It just looked cool. Bloody body bag… bloody bed… bloody everything. But with every sequel Freddy annoyed me more and more and the whole thing started to look worse and worse. Friday the 13th might be shit, but it knows its shit and it’s a fun kind of shit. Nightmare always seemed to think it was cool even after it definitely wasn’t. And so that’s where we are with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (which I had never seen) and the 2010 remake… hoping that with the return of Freddy to my life, my love for the series can also return.
To recap, our boy Kellen Lutz is having nightmares. His friends and frenemies alike are like “yo, you look terrible” and he starts talking about his dreams and eventually kills himself by slicing his neck open (but we know that really Freddy did it). At his funeral Kris sees some photos that she doesn’t remember taking with our boy Kellen Lutz. She starts to wonder whether this has anything to do with the dreams they all are having even though they didn’t know each other as kids… right, Mom? (spoiler alert: they did). Kris’ boyfriend tries to comfort Kris but it doesn’t help much when Freddy comes for her. He’s like “oh shit, they are going to think I murdered her” and he runs to warn Nancy and Quentin before they definitely think he murdered her and he dies in prison… but we know that Freddy did it. Nancy and Quentin begin a quest to uncover the truth about their history and the man known as… Freddy Krueger. Turns out that Freddy Krueger worked at a school they all went to and was accused of molesting them. In their horror the parents chased him down and burned him alive. This comes as a shock to the audience. They realize they are the only ones left of all the kids in the school and have to stay awake to try to stop this vengeful ghost. For a hot second they think Freddy Krueger was innocent and they just have to prove that, which would have been a bold step for this film to take, but alas they weren’t that bold and turns out he’s just angry because they told people about all the molesting. They concoct a plan for Nancy to pull Freddy out of the dream world since she was his favorite and this works. They kill Freddy and everything is fine again. THE END… or is it? (apparently not according to the end of the film, but we haven’t seen a Nightmare film since).
Ah well. I feel like I’ve been let down so many times recently with reboot and remakes and requels of horror films lately that I can’t even muster up enough energy. Especially for something like this. Why do you even make it? There are a few OK things. Like they remake the backstory so that they have all repressed the memories of their involvement with Freddy and when the first kid ends up going to therapy it triggers the memories of the others. OK fine. They also do a fun fake out that Freddy was innocent, which would have been insane. Cowards! But all the visual stuff is just remakes of the original. I think with all these films they have to stop just remaking stuff. Be bold and try to get to the core of why people liked this shit. Otherwise it’s just boring… like this one. Just as an aside, I watched New Nightmare for the first time before watching this film. At first I was unimpressed. By the end Craven won me over. He’s a weird director (not unlike Carpenter) so when you vibe with him it’s really fun. It got me in the end.
Hot Take Clam Bake! This is going to be controversial, but here it goes… even if Freddy Krueger turned out to be innocent of molesting all those children and was wrongfully burned to death, thus turning him into a vengeful ghost… [deep breath] I still think Freddy was kind of a bad dude. Hear me out. He’s a vengeful ghost. He kills teenagers in their sleep using a glove with knives attached to it. This is a weapon he didn’t even have back in his (alleged) molesting days. That’s not good behavior. Sure you might say that you have to separate the man from the vengeful ghost but hold up… you think he’s the only innocent person ever to be killed? You see any other Freddy Krugers running around like a bunch of murderous crybabies? I don’t think so. They don’t do that, because that ain’t right. Freddy Kruger: all around bad guy. Hot Take Temperature: The heat of a thousand Freddy Krugers.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Are we finally finishing up the final qualifying film of the big three horror mega-franchised?! Let’s go!
Oh snap. We finally did it. We’ve now watched all of the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween films. And yeah, I had to look up and check that we did the Friday the 13th remake. We did. Phew!
There are bits and pieces of this film I liked, although it does feel few and far between. The main thing I think I liked was just the idea that you can’t just stay up and avoid Freddy. That, effectively, once you get tired enough you will take micro-naps and it is in that in-between state where you’ll always be vulnerable to Freddy.
I didn’t really like the suggestion whereby they headfake a wait? Was Freddy innocent? Of course he wasn’t! But like … it kind of would have been cool if he was. The idea that Freddy is a child murderer and then ends up being a quippy weirdo in the original franchise is pretty unsettling. The idea that an innocent man is murdered by a town and it turns him into a dream walking murderer, pure evil and vengeance incarnate? Kind of a cool idea. The fans would have been quite upset though. So child molester it is!
Otherwise though, yet another hilariously brief borderline cameo performance by Kellen Lutz which I always like to see.
A brief moment where I’m like let me get this straight … these people own snowboards despite being decidedly blue collar and living in rural Ohio, I don’t buy it! That’s what occupies my mind during BMT. Honestly, it is what occupies my mind when I watch good movies too which is kind of dumb.
I really didn’t like Freddy in this, primarily because his makeup just looked bad.
And of course they did the cheesy headfake ending as well ripped straight from the original. I’m going to throw out a hottake … I didn’t like it in the original movie. I think horror films, especially slashers with Last Girls should give the audience a reprieve. The headfake ending steals that away and makes it feel truly pointless to battle Freddy since he’ll just come right back and torture you in your dreams anyways.
A small Product Placement (What?) for Dell. And a quite good Setting as a Character (Where?) for once again making it official that Elm St is somewhere in Ohio. And fine, Worst Twist (How?) for just doing the fake out twist ending again.
I’ll just end with a quick review of New Nightmare which I also watched. Kind of dumb, although I do get the meta movie with the original actress (who still had it I thought). I liked a bit where they took the lore (Freddy kind of being a trickster god or something, but Freddy is just one of his many manifestations, and he likes it, so he’s back). But ultimately it was too silly and light on new good kills to be satisfying. The best kill in the movie was pretty much just a copy of one from the original … which they also did in the remake. I get it … you can rotate a room.
Read about my remake in the quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 