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| Jackie Earle Haley awaits us as the new Freddy Krueger in Samuel Bayer's A Nightmare on Elm Street |
A group of youths from the same high school begin to get the same nightmare of a disfigured man in a striped sweater with a knife-hand that can cut them in reality!
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a shamefully uninspired remake of Wes Craven's 1984 classic of the same title, written by Wesley Strick (Doom (2005)) and Eric Heisserer (Final Destination 5 (2011)) and directed by music video director Samuel Bayer (Max (2005), short), making his feature debut. The film even allows itself to give Strick a separate story credit, although the story is all Craven's.
Nightmare starts by focusing on a young blond, who looks like a 25 year-old porn star, but who is supposed to be a regular high school girl. Her mother of course looks like an about two year older sister. SPOILER Then she dies, and we get a new protagonist, an increasingly bleary-eyes Rooney Mara (Carol (2015)). She and Kyle Gallner (Red State (2011)) make an honest attempt here, but they can far from save this a bit more ornery version of the original story, which remains a good one.
Worst about the Nightmare remake is that the personality is stripped from its iconic villain, Freddy Krueger, and that the film doesn't have the strange dream-state horror of the original. Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen (2009)) as Freddy is stuck with a mask so tight that he can give the role neither facial expressions nor real life. It's awful. Connie Britton (The Lather Effect (2006)) has good hair in the film, SPOILER but has an ungrateful role and ends up getting her eyes splatted out.
A Nightmare on Elm Street must be among the year's worst films.
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or, Don't Fall Asleep!
Here's a promo clip for the film
Cost: 35 mil. $
Box office: 115.6 mil. $
= Box office success
[A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered April 27 (Hollywood) and runs 95 minutes. As part of the film's development, it was decided to take the witticism away from the new Krueger, have him look more like a real burn victim and also change him from only a child murderer to also a child molester. Filming took place from May - July 2009 in Illinois and Indiana. The film opened #1 with a 32.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it fell a steep 72 % in its second week but still made #2 and eventually grossed 63 mil. $ (54.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 5.7 mil. $ (4.9 %) and the UK with 5 mil. $(4.3 %). Haley is contracted for two sequels, Mara for one, but development of any sequel has stood still since the film's release, and Bayer has not done a film since. A Nightmare on Elm Street is rotten at 15 % with a 3.7 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street?
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