‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ 2010: Revisiting the Controversial Reboot

April 30, 2020

nightmare on elm street reboot — Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger in 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' (2010) / New Line Cinema

Everybody loves remakes, right? Reboots? Retellings? Sometimes a film is just so outdated that even the best get updated for a new generation. How many versions of War of the Worlds are there? Purists think the 1953 version is the definitive version, but only because people who were around to hear the 1938 radio drama are not whiny geeks like the rest of us. Ten years ago, a retelling of A Nightmare on Elm Street was released. Old coots like me understand that what was once ours (an ideal Freddy Krueger in Robert Englund) would have to eventually be repackaged.

I inadvertently fibbed to my editor when I took this assignment. For the ten-year anniversary of this sleepy iteration, I proposed to view it as a first-timer. When it was released in the theater, I was one of those arrogant holdouts who refused to see it. “There is no other Freddy Krueger,” I said. What I hadn’t realized when I watched it this weekend was that I had, in fact, seen it. I don’t remember where or when, but I recognized it from beginning to end; somehow never knowing what was coming next. That’s the thing about goldfish like me. You remember some of your dreams, but you forget the naps you took. I took micro naps. I couldn’t separate reality from the dream. I wanted Jackie Earle Haley to put five fingers through my chest and end it. I had seen it before. And now, I was reliving the bad dream.

Here’s a short list of franchises that will be remade a gazillion times. They’ll never be improved upon because they are perfect. Frankenstein (1931). I have yet to see any rendition that takes me to the place I go watching the Universal classic. Dracula (1931). There are so many Dracula movies! Francis Ford Coppola gave us an update in 1992 that almost drove a stake in the Universal classic, but “you missed, sucka!” (sorry, I can’t help The Lost Boys reference there). At the risk of going all in on Universal, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Guillermo del Toro had the right idea in telling a version ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘in place of,’ and he nailed it. Still, not a successful replacement for the classic. Let’s get closer to contemporary to make my point: Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

As a snobby monster fan teenager, I was reluctant to admit these were the new monsters. At the time, I argued that slashers were not real monsters. But Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger have cemented their places in horror culture and even pop culture. Compare these three with Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and the Gill-Man and you’ve got well-known monsters whose original appearance can never be bested.

Jackie Earle Haley was born for some of his roles. He shocked Bad News Bears fans when he appeared as Rorschach in Watchmen (2009). The public was ready to see this unsung actor in a more central role. To the dismay of so many of us, Freddy Krueger was recast. There is no other actor who would take this role and actually make him more creepy. Jackie Earle Haley did what Robert Englund didn’t do. While Englund played a caricature, Haley played a freaking pedophile. Sure, Freddy has been a pedophile all along, but it was mostly exposition to explain his origin. For the most part, he played a pervert who harassed teenagers and cut them to ribbons. It was good fun, especially if you were lucky enough to see at least a few Freddy movies as a teenager.

Haley brought to life a reprehensible degenerate most of us could never relate to. He was just too good for the “love-to-hate” relationship we look for. Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger was a flamboyant villain who spits puns better than Milton Jones and made murder an art before Jack Nicholson’s Joker ever suggested it should be. We watched Freddy movies with the specific idea in mind that kids would meet their respective demise in a variety of spectacular and unimaginable ways. I’m a firm believer that franchises like Final Destination, Saw, and Hostel, all films that found new and creative ways to kill people, got their inspiration and motivation from the wide love of Freddy and Jason movies.

The 2010 reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street brought little to the table that was new. It’s clear that director Samuel Bayer and screenwriters Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer had a darker spin in mind. You can’t get much darker than a creep who preys on children with sexual motives. Kill all the horny teenage campers you want. Stab the babysitters, and force privileged assholes to maim themselves in order to escape. Mince the jocks, chop the preps, hack the goths, dice the nerds. If need be, feed the audience some disturbing backstory so we can believe the villain, but you have to make us like them. To actually bring that terrifyingly gross reality to the screen is unnecessary and tactless. While escaping into the world of horror, viewers don’t need the implications of Krueger’s tangible pornographic relics. We don’t need his dialogue to dance on the edge of the nasty places his mind and body have gone. Props to make-up and effects, though. Freddy’s look was the right kind of ghastly.

If Robert Englund’s version of Freddy never existed, I wonder how A Nightmare on Elm Street would have been received. He’d be a new villain for a new age of horror where a dash of comedy is no longer in the recipe. But would Freddy have fans, like Jigsaw has fans? I doubt it. Jackie Earle Haley is just too good an actor. This reboot lacks the nuance that gave Freddy his charm and appeal. Ironically, there wasn’t enough blood, and the death scenes were bland. I’m hard of hearing, so I usually watch movies with subtitles on. After the climax, I finally got a chance to offer a reaction to this otherwise dull film. I never laughed at a Freddy quip. I never exaggerated a wince at how a victim bit the dust. But I finally laughed out loud at the closing scene’s opening description… [crickets chirping]. My audible laugh woke me up. The nightmare was just a bad dream.