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Shea Hennum Goes To The Movies – Nightmare On Elm Street

Published Sun, 02 May 2010 15:00:28 -0500

If you're in your twenties, or even your teens, you're probably a fan of Freddy Kruger. But, if you're younger than twenty-six, odds are that, like me, you've never even seen the original Nightmare On Elm Street. Now, you may be the one-in-ten outlier that proves the rule, but, for the most part, I'm right. This isn't a bad thing, just a thing. And it's paradigms like this (The consumer is a fan of a product they've never used) that drive studios to do big-budget remakes of movies.

And, as we all know, the rule is: remakes are bad. So, When I went to go see this new and shiny Nightmare On Elm Street, I approached it with a mixed bag of remake-skepticism and a deep want for it to be as good as the trailers have made it out to be.

I sat quietly, held onto my Kick-Ass winged penis keychain (if you don't have one, buy one; they're awesome) for no other reason than to comfort me in this midnight screening of a horror movie, and took mental notes.

Here's what I jotted down:

Well, the movie pretty much proved two things.

One: Little kids, no matter how you dice it, are scary as fuck. Yeah, I said it. Children (you may've heard of them–They're the future) are just, for some unexplainable reason, scary. At this point you may be asking yourself, "But Shea, what do creepy kids have to do with a child molester? I thought traumatized-so-bad-they-completely-repress-every-second-of-this kids were supposed to be innocent." I won't spoil it for you, because, well, who really wants to have a movie spoiled for them?

And two: Freddy Kruger is a sadistic son-of-a-bitch. This doesn't really need to be elaborated on, it's just kind of…there.

Now, onto some actual information pertaining to the quality of the film.

As far as horror movies go, A Nightmare On Elm Street easily breaks into my top five horror movies (with the likes of Paranormal Activity, The Shining, The Omen, and Rosemary's Baby). It was a seriously good flick, and I'd be willing to stack it up against dramas, which, as we all know, has a long and lauded history of award winners and blockbuster, whereas horror movies don't.

While the script did have a couple problems with it (and didn't try too hard to keep from propagating the stereotypical horror tropes) there wasn't anything too noticeable that really took you out of the film. The mediocre dialogue is noticeable, and there wasn't a whole lot of subtext (Spoiler: Surprise! We get an end-of-film one-liner that's just a quote from the bad guy + "bitch") but, again, there weren't a whole lot of times where I really took myself out of the film to think about the cheesy horror-standard dialogue. But, what sets the dialogue in this flick apart from other horror films is the lack of cursing. Don't get me wrong, I love cursing like a sailor as much as the next guy, but I, unlike modern horror writers, think there are times when certain words just don't really fit in.

The plot, though, was solid and kept up a quick pace with a nice balance of shocks, creepiness, and quick-witted dark humor. Aside from the needed dialogue sweep, the script was pretty tightly written and we should all pray that all future remakes are made with this much skill and/or reverence for what made the original so great.

I'm still a little on the fence about the acting, though. Jackie Earle Haley gives us a truly fantastic performance that should keep him working until he drops dead of some massive Welles-like coronary. Haley's Kruger and Rorschach are two of the most impressively acted characters in years, if not decades. He truly has a knack for imbuing these roles with such vitality that you almost can't help but wonder if Haley hasn't just made a deal with the devil. There were some other surprisingly excellent performances from the main cast (Kyle Gallner as Quentin; Rooney Mara as Nancy; Kaite Cassidy as Kris; Thomas Dekker as Jesse). But, these incredible feats of acting provide a stark contrast when you compare them to the work of Freddy's first victim and the parents of the teens (my non-existent desire to IMDB their names should be a pretty good measure of my love for them). So, on one hand we have some terrific acting and on the other we have…if I may be frank, we have shit. But, even though it was God-awful acting, at least it was a step up from the acting of the original (or so I've been told by the compatriot I saw it with). I guess you have to take the bad with the good.

Samuel Bayer deserves a mention, too. He did a pretty good job as director. More than I was expecting at least. That may sound pretty insulting but I don't think anyone would think much of a guy who left commercial directing to go shoot a horror movie (and to make it worse: he was directing a REMAKE!). I think the guy's got a future, and it'll be interesting to see where he takes his newfound career.

The director just a mention, but this next guy deserves an award.

The script was good.

Jackie Earle Haley was better.

But, Jeff Cutter–the cinematographer–is the best.

A Nightmare On Elm Street, if it was nothing else, at least it was so damn good to look at. It's a rare moment for me to be sitting in a theater and whisper, "goddamn this is well photographed," to my self. This was one of those nights. The neon colors pop really well against the dilapidated and worn color palette that was chosen, and it just lends that little amount of awesome that makes such a noticeable difference.

Kudos to the costume people and the prop guys on this film, because they did an excellent job of picking the right outfits for the right scenes that lended that if-it's-done-wrong-you-notice-but-if-it's-done-right-you-can't-even-tell quality to the film and every scene in it.

The FX guys: outstanding job with the Freddy's-face prosthetic, and the decision to turn the Robert Englund ghoul into a more realistic looking burn victim just made it that much creepier.

You guys…you turned it up to 11, and you made seeing this movie much more enjoyable than I was originally lead to believe. For that, I thank you.

In short: go check out this movie. It will scare you; it will make you jump out of your seat; it will make you laugh a little bit. Two thumbs up, 4/5, and 8/10. Definitely worth the price of admission.

-Shea Hennum

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