Review – A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Congratulations, Hollywood. You’ve given birth to yet another unnecessary remake. This isn’t the worst slasher movie I’ve ever seen, and though I like the original I have to admit that objectively it’s at best a minor classic of the horror genre. Still, it was a much better picture than this mediocre reheat. The teen protagonists come across as empty-headed caricatures – vastly overshadowed by Jackie Earle Haley’s performance as Freddy Krueger – which makes it impossible to care about what happens to them. And though Freddy’s pre-monster career as a child molester was always part of the set’s back story, here we really get our noses rubbed in it. Every once in awhile the filmmakers manage to conjure a good shock or make a clever visual reference to the original franchise, but the rest of the movie does little beyond serving as shelf space for the occasional good parts. Mildly amusing