I said in the last review that between John Wick and this film, one of them was great and the other was terrible. If you read my John Wick review you would know that I enjoyed it tremendously, so this leaves A Nightmare On Elm Street to be the awful one.
I had been wanting to watch this film ever since it hit the theaters, and I will admit that I did think it was okay when I had the chance to watch most of it on YouTube. I also understand that in a moment of weakness and stupidity, this film ended up on my "Top Horror Remakes" List, which I have now deleted. But after watching it all the way through, I was very disappointed in how it turned out.
The main issue I had with this movie was the pacing. It was far too fast to establish any context, and the script was so flat that you weren't able to gather any information about the characters before they ended up dying. Why should I care about these people if I don't even know who they are? Hell, for some of them, I didn't even remember their names. The movie was not skilled at all in establishing conflict or delivering exposition, and when it tried to, the entire film just stopped short. Even then, little was explained and the information we did receive did not fit well with what the film was trying to say. It was like watching someone with a throat problem trying to get the words out but being unable to.
In terms of the new Freddy, I felt that this one was painfully weak. I get that Jackie Earle Haley is capable of being a decent actor, but his character was not threatening and was really just confusing. I imagined that the reason they introduced him so early on in the film was to create some sort of shock value, the only problem being that it didn't work out that way. His prosthetic makeup was far from being believable and it made it seem like he was trying to move his lips under a giant pile of rubber, which created a sense of disillusionment and really kind of pissed me off. From what I understand, they tried to make the burns more realistic this time around, but the cinematography prevented us from seeing any of the detail. I paid attention to the coloration of many of the shots and felt that it was particularly off in scenes with Freddy. Many of the dream sequences with a red coloration were much too saturated and the lighting was so off that I felt as if Freddy was blending into the background, which took away from the shadowy and intimidating persona he was supposed to have. The dream sequences lacked a surreal atmosphere and did not feel like a dream or otherwise a different entity from the real world, which made for some confusing moments when I couldn't even figure out where the hell the characters were supposed to be.
With regards to how the other members of the cast portrayed their characters, I felt as if it would have been more believable if I had any idea as to who they were. Literally next to nothing was revealed about them and even though they made a point of trying to center it on Rooney Mara's character, I had a hard time believing that she was the protagonist. Everyone either switched from unemotionless and bored to an overacting mess of hysterics, and even the hysterical bits felt a bit underplayed. I also had a huge problem with twenty-somethings playing teenagers, and though it happens in nearly every high school movie, that doesn't mean it's a trend that we should be continuing. I really felt that this movie needed a lot of work and had to develop a lot more than it cared to, and unfortunately it just didn't seem to care about itself that much. An oppurtunity to make a mostly-campy movie into something darker failed to do its job by just not giving a shit either way.
Overall rating: 4/10
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