r/horror • u/AutoModerator • May 11 '15
Discussion Series A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) /R/HORROR Official Discussion
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10
u/KicksButtson May 11 '15
I'm still kind of on the fence about this remake. On one hand I loved the new version of Freddy with the far more realistic burn scars. And on the other hand I really hate the acting and the direction they take the story.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
Halfway through the film the main characters figure out who Freddy is and how he died. They find some reason to believe that perhaps Freddy hates them because they lied about what he did to them, which got him killed. They even confront their parents by saying it was wrong for their parents to just accept that they were telling the truth, especially when the stories they told were so outrageous.
But by the end of the film they find their stories were true and Freddy is a child molester and sadist. While this may be the typical depiction of Freddy we all know, it's nothing new. It's not very creative. The story was leading to what appeared to be such a great twist, and then it went right back to par for the course.
I think it would have been really cool if it turned out the kids lied about Freddy which is why he hates them so much. There is a line in the film where Freddy says that the kids brought him to life or something, which I thought would have been a cool hint to the possibility that Freddy is a manifestation of their subconscious guilt. That they're sort of punishing themselves, and Freddy is the result of some massive psychic trauma they all have that connects them. Then the real child molester who hurt them would turn out to be someone else, maybe the principal played by Clancy Brown.
But I know why they switched back to the normal story. The studio wanted the new remake to become a franchise capable of sequels the way the original was. So they couldn't make Freddy a psychic manifestation, he had to be real and he had to be pure evil.
Funny how you could more easily build a sequel off a character that you essentially killed in the first film than you could off a character who is a manifestation of the character's hallucination.
Either way, I really love the scene where Freddy kills the one kid and then we see him still stuck in the dream world because his brain is still active. Then Freddy intends to torture him for the next six minutes. That was fun.
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u/braidonbuck May 11 '15
Personally what really killed this movie for me was the music video look it had to it, I.e. it had cuts every four freaking frames and everything had to be tinted some colour. But Jackie Earl Halley was a good Freddy.
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u/hellsfoxes May 11 '15
Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes horror remakes are all wrong because those in charge have only the most superficial concept of the horror genre. It looks Dark and grim? Good looking bimbos? Slick violence? Then it must be a horror. But there is absolutely no recognition of horror as subtext. No tension. No mystery. Director Samuel Bayer has directed some legendary music video like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" but he has no idea what to do with 90 minutes. I would have preferred to see Wes Anderson's "Nightmare On Elm Street". At least it would have shown some imagination.
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u/Markus1127 May 11 '15 edited May 11 '15
I just could not enjoy this movie at all. I disliked the alien look Freddy had and the boring tone. I could not except accept Jackie as Freddy either.
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u/Rastaphobic May 11 '15
I might be in the minority m, but I remember liking this movie. The whole drug store part was really cool, and Jackie Was a good Freddy. I'm kinda upset we haven't seen a sequel to this one
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u/scout_jem May 11 '15
I know I'm in the minority here, but I really like this film. I love Robert, but I always found his Freddy to be funny, not scary. Jackie's Freddy was more on the creepy side which was what I liked. I just really enjoyed the movie.
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u/VenusBlue May 11 '15
I am probably going to be the odd one out here, but I didn't watch this because I didn't like the fact that they changed Freddy into a child molester. Before you say "Well, VenusBlue, in the original they had scripted him to be that way." I am already well aware of this. Basically, since that never made it to the screen, it never happened. Freddy never would have been as popular a character or as likeable a villain as he has been over the years if he had been a child molester and not just a child killer. These are two completely different characters. I like Freddy. I am also one that likes to root for the bad guy in horror films. I don't want anyone to survive. I think that his character over the years has turned him into a fan favorite for a reason. He's had a sense of humor since the beginning, and while still maintaining the ability to scare the shit out of people has managed to make people able to root for him as the bad guy. Nobody wants to root for a child molester, and that's not what Freddy was. Here it is right from Robert Englund. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eJg2qBRtg8&index=1&list=FLaPOUvBXn6MQo8TXcBawnEA
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u/[deleted] May 11 '15
It was the sort of obvious remake that we were always eventually going to get, but sort of knew that something was going to be off about it. I've only ever seen it once, so I won't write an entire book on the subject, but one thing that I found very strange was the bedroom scene where Freddy is in the wall. In the original, it was a great effect. But, here, with the lazy use of CGI instead of a super simple practical effect, it looked really off and genuinely bad.