HMRWSeil - Starring Freddy Kruger (2010)

[Seil]

Because abreviations are fun, that's why.



Okay, opening sentence. Let's see here... I'll go with "I don't hate remakes." Yeah, that sounded good. It's on record that I've said when a remake comes out, the original is usually better. The original Omen, the original Amityville, Friday The 13th, and Nightmare On Elm Street. It's true - the original is usually the better deal. That's not to say that a remake can't do a franchise justice - Rob Zombie made a decent go of it with Halloween, creating a new film with an old villain. Now, here we are with Freddy. I have to say that I was enthusiastic - Freddy is interesting amongst the classic horror villains as he has a sense of humor - a warped and twisted sense of humor, but out of everyone I can name, even Pinhead, Freddy at least cracks a couple of jokes. Which makes him all the more terrifying, as it shows he enjoys what he's doing.

Let's go back, to a simpler time: 1984. Back when a guy named Wes Craven had a movie out called Nightmare On Elm Steet. Now, it starred Heather Langenkamp as the heroine, and Robert Englund as the villain. Englund portrayed Freddy Kruger in everything, from movies - including Freddy Versus Jason - to TV series. Now, the movie was pretty great. It had great pacing, it had real life touches (by which I mean characters would act the same in real life) and it had interactions atwixt characters. All of the kids are friends, they all talk things over... which is part of the new flicks undoing.

The new film - the 2010 one directed by Samuel Bayer - is just so excited to get Freddy in there that you've got two kids dead before you know what you're doing. The new writers - yeah, there's two - changed a few things - and while Rob Zombie did too, in Halloween, his changes were definately not as bad as this.

We know Freddy. We do. Heap six dozen sequels on a guy and you can't not know him. The great moments - the body bag dream, Nancy's booby traps, the ending, moments with Depp's character, Nancy's drunk mother... they're either not there or shuffled and switched beyond recognition. That isn't simple nostalgia talking - the moments in the new movie that are callbacks to the old... They're there because the film sucks. They're there to remind you "Hey, this is still a Freddy flick! Freddy's good for it!" Maybe Robert Englund was, but Jackie Earl Hayley isn't. Which is a shame, because he's a good actor. He was great in Watchmen. Though with all the prosthetics he has to wear, I think he's still playing Rorschach, just through a different mask - a morally ambiguous good guy, just... y'know playing the villain.

The new plot revolves around Freddy's child killings. All the people he kills - the first in a diner, in what looks to be a promising start to the movie - went to the same preschool. Kruger was the gardener, living in the basement, which had to raise some questions. Eventually, it's found out that Kruger is abusing the kids, and he's torched. Now, we're told this in a variety of flashbacks. The kids have forgotten the cruel treatment at the hands of Kruger until recently. However, Kruger is visiting them in their dreams, bringing the memories to the surface. The thing is that we know the story of Fred Kruger, and the new preschool angle just gets confusing. Especially when Nancy - played by Rooney Mara - looks in on her preschool classmates. All dead - one even dying in his video blog.

Now, let me say something to the writers: in the original film, the Wes Craven one, things are understandable. The parents killed Freddy Kruger - they watched him burn. They believe him to be dead, so when their children had nightmares, they dismissed them and tried their best to look after the kids. Nancy's mother, Marge, turns to the bottle once Nancy starts bringing things out of her dreams - like Kruger's hat. Johnny Depp, who is focusing on staying awake and helping Nancy is forbidden to see her by his parents - beliving his sleep deprived state is a result of her bad influence. They repeatedly talk to their parents, vehemently confronting them about everything. They use all the resources at their disposal.

In the new flick, the kids don't talk much - the first two deaths occuring in the first twenty minutes without a chance to really talk. But you've got the two leads left for the next hour or so figuring out what's going on, doing all the detective work, checking up on the former students - and they don't think to tell anyone. No "Hey, maybe since everyone who was associated with this preschool has died horrible deaths, and since the last two were friends of ours that died from mysterious injuries right in front of a witness and we're having night terrors of the same guy that they were before they died, should we just tell the people who burned the pedophile who's causing this to death that we're conducting an impromptu investigation?" No, not even a phone call from the road. They even have this crazy idea that Freddy is innocent - which, since we know the story, we know isn't true.

There's good acting - Hayley was just doin' as he was told for Freddy, the kids are all okay - the effects are impressive... But this is a Freddy movie, and there's no Freddy. There's just another replacable slasher who hired a bad editor. Even the scares aren't really there. They're funhouse scares, the ones that pop out with a sudden camera turn or a character reaction after a slow pause. Predictable, especially later. The ending was extremely rushed, and far less good. When the body bag scene begins, I laughed. It was a great scene in the original, but in the new film, it's funny. And that's wrong.