The original "A Nightmare On Elm Street" is my favorite horror movie of all time. A remake to me seemed to be set up for a failure from the get go, but of course, I had to see it.
The result doesn't make me - and most fans, I'd imagine - very happy: The pacing is all wrong, the imagery and the imagination of the original are gone and have been replaced by cheap CGI, soulless quick cuts and cheap jumps. The backstory has been changed for the worse, the teenage characters (and the actors who portray them) are shallow and annoying, and finally Jackie Earle Haley, hard as he may try, can't hold a candle to Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.
ANOES 2010 is neither very thrilling, nor fun. Its washed colours and the downbeat feel of the whole child-molester-backstory make the movie more depressing than anything else. I do understand that they wanted to make Freddy scary again and get back to the nitty-gritty of the character, but firstly, I never had a problem with him being a wisecracking joker. And secondly, I believe it's pretty much impossible to take a character whose story and appearance have already been exposed so much, and make him creepy again. In this version of ANOES Freddy's really just boring. The one one-liner they did give him (about "hanging out" with a guy that's - how original - hanging from a hook or a rope or something like that), is pretty lame.
Still, for some reason I would like to go back and re-watch the movie. The original premise is just so good that even Michael Bay couldn't screw it up entirely. The few things that they did "re-imagine" are not successful, but some of them are at least interesting.
As a "Nightmare"-fan, I'll always embrace every other entry in the franchise, but this here remake is never going to get high notes from me. What saddens me the most, is that this new beginning once and for all ends the Endlund-era and the original series. Well, all things must end. I just wish that what followed would have been half as a good as what we had before.
The result doesn't make me - and most fans, I'd imagine - very happy: The pacing is all wrong, the imagery and the imagination of the original are gone and have been replaced by cheap CGI, soulless quick cuts and cheap jumps. The backstory has been changed for the worse, the teenage characters (and the actors who portray them) are shallow and annoying, and finally Jackie Earle Haley, hard as he may try, can't hold a candle to Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.
ANOES 2010 is neither very thrilling, nor fun. Its washed colours and the downbeat feel of the whole child-molester-backstory make the movie more depressing than anything else. I do understand that they wanted to make Freddy scary again and get back to the nitty-gritty of the character, but firstly, I never had a problem with him being a wisecracking joker. And secondly, I believe it's pretty much impossible to take a character whose story and appearance have already been exposed so much, and make him creepy again. In this version of ANOES Freddy's really just boring. The one one-liner they did give him (about "hanging out" with a guy that's - how original - hanging from a hook or a rope or something like that), is pretty lame.
Still, for some reason I would like to go back and re-watch the movie. The original premise is just so good that even Michael Bay couldn't screw it up entirely. The few things that they did "re-imagine" are not successful, but some of them are at least interesting.
As a "Nightmare"-fan, I'll always embrace every other entry in the franchise, but this here remake is never going to get high notes from me. What saddens me the most, is that this new beginning once and for all ends the Endlund-era and the original series. Well, all things must end. I just wish that what followed would have been half as a good as what we had before.