A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
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 If you thought Freddy's Dead was the worst, you're in for a treat.
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A Nightmare On Elm Street is a 2010 American slasher film directed by Samuel Bayer, and written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer. The film stars Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, and Kellan Lutz. Produced by Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes, it is a remake of Wes Craven's 1984 film of the same name and the reboot of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. A Nightmare on Elm Street had its world premiere in Hollywood on April 27, 2010, and was theatrically released in North America on April 30, 2010, by Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema.
Plot
Teenagers Nancy, Quentin, Kris, Jesse, and Dean are all neighborhood friends who begin having the same dream of a disfigured man who wears a tattered sweater and a glove made of knives. The man, Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), terrorizes them in their dreams, and the only escape is to wake up. But when one of their numbers dies violently, the friends realize that what happens in the dream world is real, and the only way to stay alive is to stay awake.
Why It's NOT A New Nightmare
- Freddy is very out of character, he isn't as funny as he was in the original films. They tried to take him back to the more serious way he was shown in the early films but ended up going too far and making him humorless and dull.
- He's so out of character that whenever he makes a joke, it is so forced and unfunny.
- Freddy is now a pedophile who didn’t murder the kids as a normal human, but he molested them! Not only is this not as “cool” as him killing the kids, but it’s also disturbing, and Freddy constantly annoys the audience by acting overly sexual, particularly towards Nancy.
- Except for Jackie Earle Haley, the acting sucks. Rooney Mara is bland as hell and the other characters don’t attempt to leave an impression.
- The CGI is poorly done.
- The ending is just stupid, it just ends with Freddy killing Nancy's mother, and then the film is over. While this is also how the original film ended, in that one Nancy was still dreaming, so it made more sense in context.
- The deaths (minus the opening kill) are very lame.
- Over-reliance on jump scares.
- Underwhelming climax.
- The storyline is mostly a complete repeat of the original.
- Very poor lighting in many scenes. Not helped by the fact that most of the movie takes place at night.
- The film tries too hard to one-up the original with its recreation of some of the original movie's iconic scenes. Here, said scenes don't look exciting due to the CGI.
- The film reuses the Decepticons' theme from Transformers in one scene. While both films share the same composer (Steve Jablonsky), what sense does that make?
- Freddy's one-liners are very hit-or-miss.
- The film was so bad, Robert Englund (Freddy's original actor) took a picture of himself holding a piece of cardboard, that read "2010 REMAKE SUCKS".
- So many plotholes here and there.
- The film (almost) killed A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise (unless you count the comic Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash as canon).
- Some of the characters are unlikable such as,
- As previously mentioned, Freddy Krueger has been flanderized to a child molester, rather than just a serial killer, which makes him a lot less entertaining and a lot more evil than his ironical original version.
- Nancy is a bland character.
- Jesse is VERY unlikable.
Redeeming Qualities
- Jackie Earle Haley gives a good performance as Freddy, despite being a little edgier than the original.
- There were at least some scary moments.
- The way Freddy’s victims get pulled into the dream world is pretty satisfying.
- The microsleep element is pretty creative and intriguing and helped make a few scenes scary.
- Steve Jablonsky delivers another decent and foreboding score.
Videos
Reception
A Nightmare on Elm Street was the worst-reviewed Elm Street film to date, with reviews even worse than those of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, the previously worst-reviewed film in the series, which criticized its writing, acting (particularly Haley's portrayal as Krueger), and the film's lack of depth and empathetic characters, but praised Bayer's direction and faithfulness to the 1984 film. The film scored a little better with audiences, though still has the third-lowest IMDb user rating in the series, after Freddy's Dead and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. On Rotten Tomatoes, the Nightmare on Elm Street remake has an approval rating of 15% based on 182 reviews, with an average rating of 3.90/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Visually faithful but lacking the depth and subversive twists that made the original so memorable, the Nightmare on Elm Street remake lives up to its title in the worst possible way.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average of 35 out of 100 based on 25 reviews. CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade cinemagoers gave the film was a "C+" on an A+ to F scale. Their exit polls showed that audiences were evenly divided between males and females with 40% between 18 and 24 years of age and 20% under 18.
Box Office
The film opened up at #1 on its opening weekend with a domestic gross of $32,902,299. It later made a total domestic gross of $63,075,011. In foreign countries, it made $52,589,026. Overall, the film made a worldwide gross of $115,664,037 against its $35 million budget.
Trivia
- Rooney Mara later said that working on the film was such a bad experience that she nearly gave up acting.
- Co-star Thomas Dekker disowned starring in the film.
External links
A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) at the Internet Movie Database
A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) on Rotten Tomatoes
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