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A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie Review

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 2010 supernatural slasher film directed by Samuel Bayer and starring Rooney Mara and Jackie Earle Haley. It’s a mediocre remake.

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“How’s this for a wet dream?“

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The specter of a disfigured man haunts the children of the parents who murdered him, stalking and killing them in their dreams. I liked this movie when I first watched it back when it was released. But I was eighteen back then and I hadn’t seen any previous movies in the franchise before, so I didn’t know any better. Watching it again after all these years, I agree with the overall assessment that this is the worst entry in the franchise, though it still has its strengths.

The very idea to make a more serious take on this character ultimately did not work, though I respected it for its uniqueness. This is by far the darkest and most serious movie in the franchise for better and for worse. That led to Freddy being scarier and a couple of scenes being suitably menacing and eerie.

But that approach also led to the movie feeling stale and lacking the fun factor. Jackie Earle Haley was actually a pretty inspired choice to play Krueger. If they had to recast Englund, Haley was not the worst choice you can imagine. He looks and sounds the part after all. But the problem here lies in characterization, not the acting. Freddy here is simply way too grounded and lacking in camp and humor. I missed Englund and that characterization throughout.

The other characters fared much worse. Rooney Mara was wasted on a very dull role and I found her performance far from great. She is usually much better than she was here. All the other men and women are just there to be kill fodder and nothing else.

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This A Nightmare on Elm Street is at its best when it’s focusing on kill scenes, but even those moments were not all that scary as the movie was too gory and not truly frightening. It was also repetitious in its story beats that mostly followed closely the original film’s plot, but in a much more lackluster way. The darker aesthetic was bland while the changed origin story for Krueger was not that crucial to the story. The CGI used on Krueger wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t necessary at all.