Entries from January 2016 ↓

Beyond Midnight Time For Thunder http://oldtimeradiodvd.com

Beyond Midnight Time For Thunder http://oldtimeradiodvd.com

Beyond Midnight Time For Thunder http://oldtimeradiodvd.com

Beyond Midnight Time For Thunder http://oldtimeradiodvd.com

Well friends, The Nightmare-ening is over and I believe my faculties are largely intact. It went pretty much the way I expected it to–I love Part 3, dislike everything after that to varying degrees, Part 2 is super gay...I think the big surprise was that I didn't hate the remake. Sure, sure, it gets a shit ton of stuff wrong, but I dig the stuff it gets right. And given how much I loathe the other Platinum Dunes remakes, saying "I didn't hate it" is like giving it a hundred Oscars.

Before wrapping this up, I thought back on the gallery of awful Michael Myers masks I posted once upon a time. Surely there are awful Freddy Krueger masks, I thought. Why, if I find some I will make a gallery of them. Just as I suspected, there are some awful Freddy Krueger masks out there, such as this Chiclet-riddled number.


But in the midst of my Googling, I found something better than awful Freddy Krueger masks, and that something better is dogs dressed up like Freddy Krueger. Let's have a gallery of those, shall we? And also, let's start an internet petition for Freddy to come back in A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Dream Dog. In the movie, he will be a dog. (spoiler)












Bonus Round! (And ideas for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 8 and 9)



Oh! Just a programming note: if you followed Final Girl using Twitter, Yahoo, openID, or anything basically not Google, you can no longer follow/sign into Google Friend Account via those providers. You need a Google account! So if you want to follow Final Girl by adding it to your reading list, getcherself a Google account and connect, baby. The link is over there on the right somewhere near the top of the page.

Well friends, The Nightmare-ening is over and I believe my faculties are largely intact. It went pretty much the way I expected it to–I love Part 3, dislike everything after that to varying degrees, Part 2 is super gay...I think the big surprise was that I didn't hate the remake. Sure, sure, it gets a shit ton of stuff wrong, but I dig the stuff it gets right. And given how much I loathe the other Platinum Dunes remakes, saying "I didn't hate it" is like giving it a hundred Oscars.

Before wrapping this up, I thought back on the gallery of awful Michael Myers masks I posted once upon a time. Surely there are awful Freddy Krueger masks, I thought. Why, if I find some I will make a gallery of them. Just as I suspected, there are some awful Freddy Krueger masks out there, such as this Chiclet-riddled number.


But in the midst of my Googling, I found something better than awful Freddy Krueger masks, and that something better is dogs dressed up like Freddy Krueger. Let's have a gallery of those, shall we? And also, let's start an internet petition for Freddy to come back in A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Dream Dog. In the movie, he will be a dog. (spoiler)












Bonus Round! (And ideas for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 8 and 9)



Oh! Just a programming note: if you followed Final Girl using Twitter, Yahoo, openID, or anything basically not Google, you can no longer follow/sign into Google Friend Account via those providers. You need a Google account! So if you want to follow Final Girl by adding it to your reading list, getcherself a Google account and connect, baby. The link is over there on the right somewhere near the top of the page.

Well friends, The Nightmare-ening is over and I believe my faculties are largely intact. It went pretty much the way I expected it to–I love Part 3, dislike everything after that to varying degrees, Part 2 is super gay...I think the big surprise was that I didn't hate the remake. Sure, sure, it gets a shit ton of stuff wrong, but I dig the stuff it gets right. And given how much I loathe the other Platinum Dunes remakes, saying "I didn't hate it" is like giving it a hundred Oscars.

Before wrapping this up, I thought back on the gallery of awful Michael Myers masks I posted once upon a time. Surely there are awful Freddy Krueger masks, I thought. Why, if I find some I will make a gallery of them. Just as I suspected, there are some awful Freddy Krueger masks out there, such as this Chiclet-riddled number.


But in the midst of my Googling, I found something better than awful Freddy Krueger masks, and that something better is dogs dressed up like Freddy Krueger. Let's have a gallery of those, shall we? And also, let's start an internet petition for Freddy to come back in A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Dream Dog. In the movie, he will be a dog. (spoiler)












Bonus Round! (And ideas for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 8 and 9)



Oh! Just a programming note: if you followed Final Girl using Twitter, Yahoo, openID, or anything basically not Google, you can no longer follow/sign into Google Friend Account via those providers. You need a Google account! So if you want to follow Final Girl by adding it to your reading list, getcherself a Google account and connect, baby. The link is over there on the right somewhere near the top of the page.

Well friends, The Nightmare-ening is over and I believe my faculties are largely intact. It went pretty much the way I expected it to–I love Part 3, dislike everything after that to varying degrees, Part 2 is super gay...I think the big surprise was that I didn't hate the remake. Sure, sure, it gets a shit ton of stuff wrong, but I dig the stuff it gets right. And given how much I loathe the other Platinum Dunes remakes, saying "I didn't hate it" is like giving it a hundred Oscars.

Before wrapping this up, I thought back on the gallery of awful Michael Myers masks I posted once upon a time. Surely there are awful Freddy Krueger masks, I thought. Why, if I find some I will make a gallery of them. Just as I suspected, there are some awful Freddy Krueger masks out there, such as this Chiclet-riddled number.


But in the midst of my Googling, I found something better than awful Freddy Krueger masks, and that something better is dogs dressed up like Freddy Krueger. Let's have a gallery of those, shall we? And also, let's start an internet petition for Freddy to come back in A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Dream Dog. In the movie, he will be a dog. (spoiler)












Bonus Round! (And ideas for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 8 and 9)



Oh! Just a programming note: if you followed Final Girl using Twitter, Yahoo, openID, or anything basically not Google, you can no longer follow/sign into Google Friend Account via those providers. You need a Google account! So if you want to follow Final Girl by adding it to your reading list, getcherself a Google account and connect, baby. The link is over there on the right somewhere near the top of the page.

Well friends, The Nightmare-ening is over and I believe my faculties are largely intact. It went pretty much the way I expected it to–I love Part 3, dislike everything after that to varying degrees, Part 2 is super gay...I think the big surprise was that I didn't hate the remake. Sure, sure, it gets a shit ton of stuff wrong, but I dig the stuff it gets right. And given how much I loathe the other Platinum Dunes remakes, saying "I didn't hate it" is like giving it a hundred Oscars.

Before wrapping this up, I thought back on the gallery of awful Michael Myers masks I posted once upon a time. Surely there are awful Freddy Krueger masks, I thought. Why, if I find some I will make a gallery of them. Just as I suspected, there are some awful Freddy Krueger masks out there, such as this Chiclet-riddled number.


But in the midst of my Googling, I found something better than awful Freddy Krueger masks, and that something better is dogs dressed up like Freddy Krueger. Let's have a gallery of those, shall we? And also, let's start an internet petition for Freddy to come back in A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Dream Dog. In the movie, he will be a dog. (spoiler)












Bonus Round! (And ideas for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 8 and 9)



Oh! Just a programming note: if you followed Final Girl using Twitter, Yahoo, openID, or anything basically not Google, you can no longer follow/sign into Google Friend Account via those providers. You need a Google account! So if you want to follow Final Girl by adding it to your reading list, getcherself a Google account and connect, baby. The link is over there on the right somewhere near the top of the page.

Well friends, The Nightmare-ening is over and I believe my faculties are largely intact. It went pretty much the way I expected it to–I love Part 3, dislike everything after that to varying degrees, Part 2 is super gay...I think the big surprise was that I didn't hate the remake. Sure, sure, it gets a shit ton of stuff wrong, but I dig the stuff it gets right. And given how much I loathe the other Platinum Dunes remakes, saying "I didn't hate it" is like giving it a hundred Oscars.

Before wrapping this up, I thought back on the gallery of awful Michael Myers masks I posted once upon a time. Surely there are awful Freddy Krueger masks, I thought. Why, if I find some I will make a gallery of them. Just as I suspected, there are some awful Freddy Krueger masks out there, such as this Chiclet-riddled number.


But in the midst of my Googling, I found something better than awful Freddy Krueger masks, and that something better is dogs dressed up like Freddy Krueger. Let's have a gallery of those, shall we? And also, let's start an internet petition for Freddy to come back in A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Dream Dog. In the movie, he will be a dog. (spoiler)












Bonus Round! (And ideas for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 8 and 9)



Oh! Just a programming note: if you followed Final Girl using Twitter, Yahoo, openID, or anything basically not Google, you can no longer follow/sign into Google Friend Account via those providers. You need a Google account! So if you want to follow Final Girl by adding it to your reading list, getcherself a Google account and connect, baby. The link is over there on the right somewhere near the top of the page.

Well friends, The Nightmare-ening is over and I believe my faculties are largely intact. It went pretty much the way I expected it to–I love Part 3, dislike everything after that to varying degrees, Part 2 is super gay...I think the big surprise was that I didn't hate the remake. Sure, sure, it gets a shit ton of stuff wrong, but I dig the stuff it gets right. And given how much I loathe the other Platinum Dunes remakes, saying "I didn't hate it" is like giving it a hundred Oscars.

Before wrapping this up, I thought back on the gallery of awful Michael Myers masks I posted once upon a time. Surely there are awful Freddy Krueger masks, I thought. Why, if I find some I will make a gallery of them. Just as I suspected, there are some awful Freddy Krueger masks out there, such as this Chiclet-riddled number.


But in the midst of my Googling, I found something better than awful Freddy Krueger masks, and that something better is dogs dressed up like Freddy Krueger. Let's have a gallery of those, shall we? And also, let's start an internet petition for Freddy to come back in A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Dream Dog. In the movie, he will be a dog. (spoiler)












Bonus Round! (And ideas for A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 8 and 9)



Oh! Just a programming note: if you followed Final Girl using Twitter, Yahoo, openID, or anything basically not Google, you can no longer follow/sign into Google Friend Account via those providers. You need a Google account! So if you want to follow Final Girl by adding it to your reading list, getcherself a Google account and connect, baby. The link is over there on the right somewhere near the top of the page.

I'm not sure if it's because I've watched so many garbage Elm Street movies in such a short period of time, or if maybe there's a gas leak in my apartment, or what but I have to just say it: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 isn't nearly as bad as I'd heard it was, nor as bad as I expected it to be. I bet there's some kind of lesson in there about "judging things for yourself" and "internet opinions." But in my internet opinion, this remake gets some things wrong, sure, but it also gets a lot of things right.

(I can't believe I'm saying that about a Platinum Dunes movie for Charles Nelson Reilly's sake...am I getting soft?)

The single biggest thing the film gets right, of course, is this attempt at reviving the 80s horror movie trend where ladies wore sports jerseys as pajamas. Bravo, remake! If only you gave us a moustache or two...


Anyway. The gist of A Nightmare on Elm Street stays true to the original: Freddy Krueger haunts the dreams of several high schoolers in Springwood, Ohio. If Freddy kills them in their dreams, they die in real life. He's motivated by a lust for revenge and a love of murder (aren't we all?) because a mob of unruly vigilante Elm Street parents burned him alive years earlier.

This 21st century incarnation of Krueger isn't a child murderer who escaped justice due to a technicality, however; this Freddy is a child molester who is subjected to mob justice once the children tell of his crimes. That is some surprisingly heavy shit, and it gives a depressing, fucking icky tone to the entire affair. Audiences who have fond memories of (sigh) "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" and Freddy donning sunglasses to crack wise on MTV must have found all of this a shock. Horror fans have long rooted for the bad guys thanks to the outrageous kills they inflict on insipid, "deserving" characters...but you just can't root for a child molester. I applaud the film for daring to go there; finally Freddy Krueger is as reprehensible as he should be. An even darker nightmare, perhaps, is that his return marks the return of the memories the Elm Street children have long repressed. This is not a "good time" slasher flick.


Alas, alack, in the details the remake occasionally falters, sometimes egregiously so.

What do you do, say, when you're tasked with remaking a classic horror film that features some of the genre's most indelible moments? Do you ape them, or try to put your own spin on them? I'm not sure what the right answer is; director Samuel Bayer, however, elected to do both. Some iconic moments are simply recreated, and I'm not entirely sure what the honest effect of these moments is like. As an Elm Street Oldie Hawn, I simply nod in recognition. In 1984, I was scared and startled by them.


Other times, Bayer tries something new to much lesser effect. CGI nonsense aside, Freddy emerging from the side all washed out in brown is not nearly as impactful as when he looms over Nancy from the darkness.



Where the Nightmare remake lets us and itself down the most, however, is with its treatment of Nancy. The original Nancy is one of horror's greatest Final Girls, so "into survival" that she determinedly takes control of a terrible situation as she tries to save her own life and the lives of her friends. She literally turns her back on the monster as she reclaims any bit of power she gave him. She's a strong-willed hero, dammit, and she's only 15.

It seems that perhaps someone wanted to play with the Final Girl trope in Nightmare 2010, if only to toy with veteran audience expectation. I've got no issues with changing up a trope, but if you're going to do it, make it worthwhile. Here, Nancy is simply a milquetoast slice of nothingness, more like the type of nameless slasher victim who gets killed early on rather than the hero and main character. There's a bit of an attempt to give Nancy some depth–instead of simply being a dork with a boyfriend, she's an artistic loner–and while actress Rooney Mara's inherent strangeness works for the character to an extent, there's simply nothing interesting for her Nancy to say or to do and most of the time she comes off as bored with the entire affair. Ultimately she isn't saved by her own pluck and ingenuity, but by a fella, dammit. Then she gets one of those "cool" one-liners and ugh, you guys. While I guess you could technically say that original Nancy also had a one-liner to end her face off with Freddy, it wasn't so..."horror movie." If as much care and attention and effort had been given to Nancy (not to mention the other characters) as had been given to Freddy's new backstory, this remake really could have been something.


It's frustrating because the film is so bold in some respects and so dull in others. It's not just the characters, it's the weirdness of the dream world–and, I am absolutely not talking about people turning into meatballs or any "wizard master" cheesiness. I mean in the 1984 film, the world of nightmares was reality skewed: think Freddy's arms extending to impossible lengths in the alleyway or the random appearance of a bleating goat or some such. Perhaps in the remake they're trying to make the point that the characters are so exhausted they literally can't discern dreams from reality, I don't know...but when the nightmares look like waking life (but a little bit grimier), it makes A Nightmare on Elm Street little more than a regular slasher flick and that's a shame.

Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy it because I did, so there. Maybe more so because of what it tried to do and what it could have been than what it actually was. Maybe it's because I suffered through Freddy's Dead yesterday and watching the bottom of my foot for 90 minutes today would have been more enjoyable. Or maybe Elm Street 2010 isn't that bad? Hmm, maybe I need to read some more internet opinions before I make up my mind.

P.S. why does Kyle Gallner always look so sad in everything

I'm not sure if it's because I've watched so many garbage Elm Street movies in such a short period of time, or if maybe there's a gas leak in my apartment, or what but I have to just say it: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 isn't nearly as bad as I'd heard it was, nor as bad as I expected it to be. I bet there's some kind of lesson in there about "judging things for yourself" and "internet opinions." But in my internet opinion, this remake gets some things wrong, sure, but it also gets a lot of things right.

(I can't believe I'm saying that about a Platinum Dunes movie for Charles Nelson Reilly's sake...am I getting soft?)

The single biggest thing the film gets right, of course, is this attempt at reviving the 80s horror movie trend where ladies wore sports jerseys as pajamas. Bravo, remake! If only you gave us a moustache or two...


Anyway. The gist of A Nightmare on Elm Street stays true to the original: Freddy Krueger haunts the dreams of several high schoolers in Springwood, Ohio. If Freddy kills them in their dreams, they die in real life. He's motivated by a lust for revenge and a love of murder (aren't we all?) because a mob of unruly vigilante Elm Street parents burned him alive years earlier.

This 21st century incarnation of Krueger isn't a child murderer who escaped justice due to a technicality, however; this Freddy is a child molester who is subjected to mob justice once the children tell of his crimes. That is some surprisingly heavy shit, and it gives a depressing, fucking icky tone to the entire affair. Audiences who have fond memories of (sigh) "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" and Freddy donning sunglasses to crack wise on MTV must have found all of this a shock. Horror fans have long rooted for the bad guys thanks to the outrageous kills they inflict on insipid, "deserving" characters...but you just can't root for a child molester. I applaud the film for daring to go there; finally Freddy Krueger is as reprehensible as he should be. An even darker nightmare, perhaps, is that his return marks the return of the memories the Elm Street children have long repressed. This is not a "good time" slasher flick.


Alas, alack, in the details the remake occasionally falters, sometimes egregiously so.

What do you do, say, when you're tasked with remaking a classic horror film that features some of the genre's most indelible moments? Do you ape them, or try to put your own spin on them? I'm not sure what the right answer is; director Samuel Bayer, however, elected to do both. Some iconic moments are simply recreated, and I'm not entirely sure what the honest effect of these moments is like. As an Elm Street Oldie Hawn, I simply nod in recognition. In 1984, I was scared and startled by them.


Other times, Bayer tries something new to much lesser effect. CGI nonsense aside, Freddy emerging from the side all washed out in brown is not nearly as impactful as when he looms over Nancy from the darkness.



Where the Nightmare remake lets us and itself down the most, however, is with its treatment of Nancy. The original Nancy is one of horror's greatest Final Girls, so "into survival" that she determinedly takes control of a terrible situation as she tries to save her own life and the lives of her friends. She literally turns her back on the monster as she reclaims any bit of power she gave him. She's a strong-willed hero, dammit, and she's only 15.

It seems that perhaps someone wanted to play with the Final Girl trope in Nightmare 2010, if only to toy with veteran audience expectation. I've got no issues with changing up a trope, but if you're going to do it, make it worthwhile. Here, Nancy is simply a milquetoast slice of nothingness, more like the type of nameless slasher victim who gets killed early on rather than the hero and main character. There's a bit of an attempt to give Nancy some depth–instead of simply being a dork with a boyfriend, she's an artistic loner–and while actress Rooney Mara's inherent strangeness works for the character to an extent, there's simply nothing interesting for her Nancy to say or to do and most of the time she comes off as bored with the entire affair. Ultimately she isn't saved by her own pluck and ingenuity, but by a fella, dammit. Then she gets one of those "cool" one-liners and ugh, you guys. While I guess you could technically say that original Nancy also had a one-liner to end her face off with Freddy, it wasn't so..."horror movie." If as much care and attention and effort had been given to Nancy (not to mention the other characters) as had been given to Freddy's new backstory, this remake really could have been something.


It's frustrating because the film is so bold in some respects and so dull in others. It's not just the characters, it's the weirdness of the dream world–and, I am absolutely not talking about people turning into meatballs or any "wizard master" cheesiness. I mean in the 1984 film, the world of nightmares was reality skewed: think Freddy's arms extending to impossible lengths in the alleyway or the random appearance of a bleating goat or some such. Perhaps in the remake they're trying to make the point that the characters are so exhausted they literally can't discern dreams from reality, I don't know...but when the nightmares look like waking life (but a little bit grimier), it makes A Nightmare on Elm Street little more than a regular slasher flick and that's a shame.

Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy it because I did, so there. Maybe more so because of what it tried to do and what it could have been than what it actually was. Maybe it's because I suffered through Freddy's Dead yesterday and watching the bottom of my foot for 90 minutes today would have been more enjoyable. Or maybe Elm Street 2010 isn't that bad? Hmm, maybe I need to read some more internet opinions before I make up my mind.

P.S. why does Kyle Gallner always look so sad in everything

I'm not sure if it's because I've watched so many garbage Elm Street movies in such a short period of time, or if maybe there's a gas leak in my apartment, or what but I have to just say it: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 isn't nearly as bad as I'd heard it was, nor as bad as I expected it to be. I bet there's some kind of lesson in there about "judging things for yourself" and "internet opinions." But in my internet opinion, this remake gets some things wrong, sure, but it also gets a lot of things right.

(I can't believe I'm saying that about a Platinum Dunes movie for Charles Nelson Reilly's sake...am I getting soft?)

The single biggest thing the film gets right, of course, is this attempt at reviving the 80s horror movie trend where ladies wore sports jerseys as pajamas. Bravo, remake! If only you gave us a moustache or two...


Anyway. The gist of A Nightmare on Elm Street stays true to the original: Freddy Krueger haunts the dreams of several high schoolers in Springwood, Ohio. If Freddy kills them in their dreams, they die in real life. He's motivated by a lust for revenge and a love of murder (aren't we all?) because a mob of unruly vigilante Elm Street parents burned him alive years earlier.

This 21st century incarnation of Krueger isn't a child murderer who escaped justice due to a technicality, however; this Freddy is a child molester who is subjected to mob justice once the children tell of his crimes. That is some surprisingly heavy shit, and it gives a depressing, fucking icky tone to the entire affair. Audiences who have fond memories of (sigh) "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" and Freddy donning sunglasses to crack wise on MTV must have found all of this a shock. Horror fans have long rooted for the bad guys thanks to the outrageous kills they inflict on insipid, "deserving" characters...but you just can't root for a child molester. I applaud the film for daring to go there; finally Freddy Krueger is as reprehensible as he should be. An even darker nightmare, perhaps, is that his return marks the return of the memories the Elm Street children have long repressed. This is not a "good time" slasher flick.


Alas, alack, in the details the remake occasionally falters, sometimes egregiously so.

What do you do, say, when you're tasked with remaking a classic horror film that features some of the genre's most indelible moments? Do you ape them, or try to put your own spin on them? I'm not sure what the right answer is; director Samuel Bayer, however, elected to do both. Some iconic moments are simply recreated, and I'm not entirely sure what the honest effect of these moments is like. As an Elm Street Oldie Hawn, I simply nod in recognition. In 1984, I was scared and startled by them.


Other times, Bayer tries something new to much lesser effect. CGI nonsense aside, Freddy emerging from the side all washed out in brown is not nearly as impactful as when he looms over Nancy from the darkness.



Where the Nightmare remake lets us and itself down the most, however, is with its treatment of Nancy. The original Nancy is one of horror's greatest Final Girls, so "into survival" that she determinedly takes control of a terrible situation as she tries to save her own life and the lives of her friends. She literally turns her back on the monster as she reclaims any bit of power she gave him. She's a strong-willed hero, dammit, and she's only 15.

It seems that perhaps someone wanted to play with the Final Girl trope in Nightmare 2010, if only to toy with veteran audience expectation. I've got no issues with changing up a trope, but if you're going to do it, make it worthwhile. Here, Nancy is simply a milquetoast slice of nothingness, more like the type of nameless slasher victim who gets killed early on rather than the hero and main character. There's a bit of an attempt to give Nancy some depth–instead of simply being a dork with a boyfriend, she's an artistic loner–and while actress Rooney Mara's inherent strangeness works for the character to an extent, there's simply nothing interesting for her Nancy to say or to do and most of the time she comes off as bored with the entire affair. Ultimately she isn't saved by her own pluck and ingenuity, but by a fella, dammit. Then she gets one of those "cool" one-liners and ugh, you guys. While I guess you could technically say that original Nancy also had a one-liner to end her face off with Freddy, it wasn't so..."horror movie." If as much care and attention and effort had been given to Nancy (not to mention the other characters) as had been given to Freddy's new backstory, this remake really could have been something.


It's frustrating because the film is so bold in some respects and so dull in others. It's not just the characters, it's the weirdness of the dream world–and, I am absolutely not talking about people turning into meatballs or any "wizard master" cheesiness. I mean in the 1984 film, the world of nightmares was reality skewed: think Freddy's arms extending to impossible lengths in the alleyway or the random appearance of a bleating goat or some such. Perhaps in the remake they're trying to make the point that the characters are so exhausted they literally can't discern dreams from reality, I don't know...but when the nightmares look like waking life (but a little bit grimier), it makes A Nightmare on Elm Street little more than a regular slasher flick and that's a shame.

Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy it because I did, so there. Maybe more so because of what it tried to do and what it could have been than what it actually was. Maybe it's because I suffered through Freddy's Dead yesterday and watching the bottom of my foot for 90 minutes today would have been more enjoyable. Or maybe Elm Street 2010 isn't that bad? Hmm, maybe I need to read some more internet opinions before I make up my mind.

P.S. why does Kyle Gallner always look so sad in everything

I'm not sure if it's because I've watched so many garbage Elm Street movies in such a short period of time, or if maybe there's a gas leak in my apartment, or what but I have to just say it: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 isn't nearly as bad as I'd heard it was, nor as bad as I expected it to be. I bet there's some kind of lesson in there about "judging things for yourself" and "internet opinions." But in my internet opinion, this remake gets some things wrong, sure, but it also gets a lot of things right.

(I can't believe I'm saying that about a Platinum Dunes movie for Charles Nelson Reilly's sake...am I getting soft?)

The single biggest thing the film gets right, of course, is this attempt at reviving the 80s horror movie trend where ladies wore sports jerseys as pajamas. Bravo, remake! If only you gave us a moustache or two...


Anyway. The gist of A Nightmare on Elm Street stays true to the original: Freddy Krueger haunts the dreams of several high schoolers in Springwood, Ohio. If Freddy kills them in their dreams, they die in real life. He's motivated by a lust for revenge and a love of murder (aren't we all?) because a mob of unruly vigilante Elm Street parents burned him alive years earlier.

This 21st century incarnation of Krueger isn't a child murderer who escaped justice due to a technicality, however; this Freddy is a child molester who is subjected to mob justice once the children tell of his crimes. That is some surprisingly heavy shit, and it gives a depressing, fucking icky tone to the entire affair. Audiences who have fond memories of (sigh) "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" and Freddy donning sunglasses to crack wise on MTV must have found all of this a shock. Horror fans have long rooted for the bad guys thanks to the outrageous kills they inflict on insipid, "deserving" characters...but you just can't root for a child molester. I applaud the film for daring to go there; finally Freddy Krueger is as reprehensible as he should be. An even darker nightmare, perhaps, is that his return marks the return of the memories the Elm Street children have long repressed. This is not a "good time" slasher flick.


Alas, alack, in the details the remake occasionally falters, sometimes egregiously so.

What do you do, say, when you're tasked with remaking a classic horror film that features some of the genre's most indelible moments? Do you ape them, or try to put your own spin on them? I'm not sure what the right answer is; director Samuel Bayer, however, elected to do both. Some iconic moments are simply recreated, and I'm not entirely sure what the honest effect of these moments is like. As an Elm Street Oldie Hawn, I simply nod in recognition. In 1984, I was scared and startled by them.


Other times, Bayer tries something new to much lesser effect. CGI nonsense aside, Freddy emerging from the side all washed out in brown is not nearly as impactful as when he looms over Nancy from the darkness.



Where the Nightmare remake lets us and itself down the most, however, is with its treatment of Nancy. The original Nancy is one of horror's greatest Final Girls, so "into survival" that she determinedly takes control of a terrible situation as she tries to save her own life and the lives of her friends. She literally turns her back on the monster as she reclaims any bit of power she gave him. She's a strong-willed hero, dammit, and she's only 15.

It seems that perhaps someone wanted to play with the Final Girl trope in Nightmare 2010, if only to toy with veteran audience expectation. I've got no issues with changing up a trope, but if you're going to do it, make it worthwhile. Here, Nancy is simply a milquetoast slice of nothingness, more like the type of nameless slasher victim who gets killed early on rather than the hero and main character. There's a bit of an attempt to give Nancy some depth–instead of simply being a dork with a boyfriend, she's an artistic loner–and while actress Rooney Mara's inherent strangeness works for the character to an extent, there's simply nothing interesting for her Nancy to say or to do and most of the time she comes off as bored with the entire affair. Ultimately she isn't saved by her own pluck and ingenuity, but by a fella, dammit. Then she gets one of those "cool" one-liners and ugh, you guys. While I guess you could technically say that original Nancy also had a one-liner to end her face off with Freddy, it wasn't so..."horror movie." If as much care and attention and effort had been given to Nancy (not to mention the other characters) as had been given to Freddy's new backstory, this remake really could have been something.


It's frustrating because the film is so bold in some respects and so dull in others. It's not just the characters, it's the weirdness of the dream world–and, I am absolutely not talking about people turning into meatballs or any "wizard master" cheesiness. I mean in the 1984 film, the world of nightmares was reality skewed: think Freddy's arms extending to impossible lengths in the alleyway or the random appearance of a bleating goat or some such. Perhaps in the remake they're trying to make the point that the characters are so exhausted they literally can't discern dreams from reality, I don't know...but when the nightmares look like waking life (but a little bit grimier), it makes A Nightmare on Elm Street little more than a regular slasher flick and that's a shame.

Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy it because I did, so there. Maybe more so because of what it tried to do and what it could have been than what it actually was. Maybe it's because I suffered through Freddy's Dead yesterday and watching the bottom of my foot for 90 minutes today would have been more enjoyable. Or maybe Elm Street 2010 isn't that bad? Hmm, maybe I need to read some more internet opinions before I make up my mind.

P.S. why does Kyle Gallner always look so sad in everything