Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

New Line Cinema

Film Release

Nightmare on Elm Street was an instant success in 1984 and gave birth to one of the most successful horror franchises. Robert Englund with his trademark wit played a child killer who is killed by a group of vigilante parents. He returns in their children’s dreams and takes bloody revenge. While the original series are a major success many film critics, myself included, were a little surprised by the transformation of child killer into campy and witty anti-hero. As the series progressed he became a perversely comic horror figure with even children running around with Freddy masks and gloves.

The new Nightmare on Elm Street is a much darker vision. While taking inspiration from the original by Wes Craven, director Samuel Bayer working from a script by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer tries to capture the essence of the Freddy story. This time Freddy is not a quick witted anti-hero but a child molester and abuser. He was a gardener at a pre-school and kept a den under the building where he sexually abused his victims. When the parents realize something is up, they decide to take the law in their own hands and burn him to death. They cover up all the details of what has occurred and hope their children will not remember. When they do not find the hidden den they wonder whether they killed an innocent man and try and sustain a conspiracy of silence around Krueger and the events at the preschool.

Years later the youngsters and now teenagers and have very violent dreams of a man with a burnt face and a stylized gardening fork which has become a bladed glove. As they begin to recover memories of their childhood abuse, they are unsure about what they all mean. At first their parents deny any knowledge of the events and the teens begin to think that their parents killed an innocent man based on the hearsay evidence they collected from the teens when they were kids. However, as the evidence mounts they return to the pre-school and uncover the secret room and the truth becoming shockingly clear.

The twist in the story in relation to child abuse, repressed memories and the parents vigilantism gives the film a little more relevance in the modern period.

The battle is now on between Freddy in his dream world and Nancy and Kyle who must bring him back to the real world and kill him once again. Freddy is played by Jackie Earle Haley who offers a far more menacing version of Freddy than the original. There is no room for campy innuendoes here, he is a sick puppy and this is made very clear. Certainly the background to his character takes away from the supernaturalness of his role, but it also gives a stronger sense of reality to the film. There are set-pieces which just seem to be in the film as a homage to the original (such as the body bag scene) and these seem a big incongruous and could have been omitted to make the film a tighter work of horror. At the same time I think this is an interesting new take on an old series which while not perfect is well worth seeing.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 4 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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