A Nightmare on Elm Street: Review By the_tall_guy

It's good to finally get back onto this website and review a movie. I've been really busy with school things and shows that I've actually put aside watching movies. There actually hasn't been a lot of movies out there that were worth reviewing. I've actually only saw two movies this year, which are Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans (which aren't good movies to watch in 3-D). This year hasn't been satisfying for me lately, and I have yet to see Iron Man 2. But I'll get to that later. Right now, I'm reviewing A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010).

I've been waiting to see this movie ever since the trailer hit the internet. The trailer made me hope that horror movies aren't as cheap as Hollywood has made them to be. I wasn't able to catch opening night (busy with a show I was in) but I was able to catch the movie at 4:00 p.m. on the following Sunday (it's not a good idea to see a horror movie in the daytime). My reactions are as followed.

I expected two things out of this movie: 1st - I expected a new take on the character of Freddy Krueger, not the same thing that I've seen Robert Englund do for the past eight movies, and 2nd - I expected that new Freddy to scare and creep me out in a way that the previous Freddy wasn't able to. The acting from the other actors and the story line, I wasn't expecting it to be good, because I knew what type of movie I was going into. This is A Nightmare on Elm Street, not The Hurt Locker. This movie did give me these two expectations. I was fascinated by this new Freddy Krueger that Jackie Earl Haley gave to the movie, and it did scare me (in a matter of speaking), and it creeped me the f*ck out. This new Freddy is not the Freddy your parents grew up with. I enjoyed seeing a new take on the character, but the only problem I had was they didn't give him enough back-story. They didn't explain why he built the glove or show us how he built the glove; they didn't explain why Freddy was so messed up. I thought they missed a big opportunity with Freddy's back-story. Maybe this is something they can fix in the future installments (if there are any). But props to Jackie Earl Haley and the casting director of this movie. You couldn't have found a better person to have replaced Robert.

The storyline of this movie is about the same as the original; a group of friends are having these series of nightmares by a dream-stalker named Freddy Krueger, and they need to find a way to stop him before they all get killed. I'm not gonna say much about the plot, because if you seen the original, you know what direction this movie is heading in. The original movie didn't have a great plot either, and this one didn't help that in any way.

The acting by the kids in this movie was better than expected. These kids obviously knew what they were doing and how to do it. Kris has to be the best actress in this movie. Nancy didn't do all that great of a job, but Heather Langenkamp also didn't do a great job either, so I'm not gonna bash her performance. Dean had a great opening dream sequence. He looked tired to begin with, and he kept that throughout his scene. I liked his death as well. It was gruesome and it got me into the feeling of what kind of nightmare movie this is. Jesse is someone I can actually relate with. He's in love with Kris, and when she dies, you can tell how devastated he is. He was also convincing while in the boiler room with Freddy; I could tell the character was really frightened by the situation. Quentin could have done a better job; he seemed like a slow and very dull character. Maybe that was a choice by the actor, but I really didn't like it. Quentin didn't seem too important to the movie.

The last thing I want to say is focused towards the fans of all the original Nightmare movies. Stop, please stop, comparing Robert's Freddy to Jackie's Freddy. They're two totally different takes on the character. If Jackie decided to duplicate Robert's Freddy, then you can compare them, but since that's not the case, don't. It's almost like comparing Jack Nicolson's Joker to Heath Ledger's Joker. You can say that one is better than the other, but let them be two different characters. It'll make the movie so much better if you don't compare things (which is hard, because there is so much from the original put into this movie). Just let Jackie do his thing, and if you don't like it, then don't go see the movie.

Thank you for reading. I'm gonna see Iron Man 2 sometime soon, so expect a review for that movie sometime this month. Goodbye.