(Warning: spoilers for both the 1984 and 2010 versions of A Nightmare on Elm Street below)
What a great, thoughtful write-up. Thanks. I 'll have to explore.
I was skeptical about this remake, but I'll have to check it out.
I may have just met the horror remake I don't dislike. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" 2010 eschews the gleeful high school horror-humor mayhem of the 1984 original and its endless sequels, but it also avoided camp, cliches and cute self-referential nods, relating the story of Freddy Krueger as a relentlessly brutal and straightforward gothic nightmare. For the most part, it works.
Friday evening of opening weekend I watched Wes Craven's 1984 original classic. I never fail to love this movie even if it doesn't age well in parts. Of course, I came of age in this exact era. You'll never hear me complaining about cheesy effects or bad synth soundtracks.
My fears about the remake were all embodied in Heather Langenkamp, who plays Nancy Thompson, the sweet, courageous high-school heroine of the film. Her sub-par acting in that particular film is more than counterbalanced by her natural charm. She was the perfect Final Girl of yore, and we all invested in her. (see Glenn Kenny's excellent article about teen horror today in Salon). Nancy was gutsy, determined and she tackled Freddy head-on with little hesitation, even building a set of Home Alone style booby traps as deftly as any man's man would. But she was also the girl-next-door. She dressed in bulky sweaters and unflattering jeans, and she had no shortage of male suitors (most notably Johnny Depp). She was attainable.
I of course expected some fame-seeking celebutard in the role of Nancy in 2010, oversexed and overly glammed up, in a vapidly written update to the role. I was happy to be proved wrong, but more on that later.
My fiance made an excellent observation about NoES 1984 - it shows how teenagers are independent and yet helpless. They want control of their own lives, but can't do anything when those lives spin out of control. Parents will be blind to your pleas for help, dismissing them as teenage hormones or a litany of social ills (drugs, alcohol, rock music, etc.). Problems are to be easily resolved by no-nonsense tough love (in this instance, locking Nancy up inside her house).
Another important observation is that the idea behind this film effectively removes filmgoers worst razzing problem with horror movies: stupid victim behavior. In a dream, how do you NOT go down to the boiler room alone, or go back inside the spooky house? You're not in control. The dream takes you where it will.
Other interesting things to note about NoES '84: 1) the concept of 'Balinese dream skills', whatever that may mean, the mystic hoohah that helps Nancy in the end (well, sort of), and; 2) Ronee Blakeley's turn as Nancy's seductively breathy-voiced barfly mom, Marge. I wonder if Johnny Depp's character really wanted to climb through the window for her?
And with all that, what to make of and what's to like about "A Nightmare on Elm Street" 2010? I refer to Andrew O'Hehir's review in Salon, where he called the movie "glum." He's absolutely right. Englund's wisecracking zingeriffic superstar Freddy is nowhere to be found here.
But is that a bad thing? I love Robert Englund and his Freddy, but he became a ubiquitous pop culture icon, the Elvis of the horror slasher set. He descended quickly into parody, ultimately becoming about as scary as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Jackie Earle Hayley's Freddy, though, doesn't stop bringing the grossly uncomfortable ick factor. He's not here to make you laugh or kill off the teenager that annoys you the most with a song and a smile. The movie is closely and graphically focused on his past as a child molester/killer, and it's indeed squirm-inducing.
And that created an interesting issue in itself, caught by those, like me, who have an interest in weird Americana. The beleaguered 'teens' in the film are united by the fact that they all attended a preschool where Freddy Krueger worked. They have “repressed memories” that are now just surfacing. Freddy takes them to a “secret cave.” Parents congregate together for some vigilante mob justice. There’s even doubts as to Freddy’s guilt.
Sound familiar? Newsweek picked up on it too. And so here I go again about the Satanic Panic.
What about the “scooby gang” angle? Let me first of all say that a major cliché/ingredient of the teen slasher is noticeably absent: sex. These teens have no hormones. If they had gone camping at Camp Crystal Lake, they would have come back without a scratch, registering barely a twitch of Jason Voorhees’ machete hand. The Johnny Depp window climb, cleverly mirrored in Craven’s 1996 “Scream,” becomes a thoroughly chaste affair of two opposite sex teens comforting each other’s anxiety. Sexual tension is nonexistent throughout, even in the sweet unrequited love subplot between Mara Rooney’s gothy-mopey new Nancy and the cherubic Quentin, played by Michael Pitt lookalike Kyle Gallner (Quentin’s Joy Division t-shirt is its own character in the film).
Again, I don’t necessarily find this lack of formula a bad thing. It’s a good way to distinguish a remake like this. If anything, I think this movie might be remembered for a bit of gratuitous male exploitation, involving a terrific dream sequence where Quentin experiences Freddy’s first demise at the hands of the parent mob that includes his own father, all the while dressed in nothing but his swim team speedos and goggles.
The central characters lack the colorful charm of the 1984 cast, but I ended up buying into their stories and enjoying their struggle against evil. Very little about them said ‘teen’, they were more glossy twentysomethings. Still the investigation into the nature of dreams and the effects of sleep deprivation were very compelling, making me think of all those college all-nighters and what they were doing with my mind.
I can’t say I hated “A Nightmare on Elm Street” 2010 – but is a new franchise viable? It's going to require some creative A-game.
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