Movie Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Starring - Jackie Earl Haley, some kids, and that guy from The Sarah Conner Chronicles


They made such a big deal about this one being 'scary' that I was looking forward to it. Jackie Earl Haley looked pretty good in the trailers. Yes it's a remake of a classic horror movie, but they couldn't screw it up any worse than they did Friday the 13th...right?? Well...I don't even know where to begin with this one folks.

One of the first things I noticed was that they never showed a close up of Freddy's face in any of the trailers that I saw. Now I know why:
Freddy looked like a fugly, burned up cat! I'm not shitting you....he looked like a cat! He was about as scary looking as a cat with mange. I couldn't help but laugh hysterically at him every time there was a close up.

Second, Freddy just isn't Freddy without his twisted humor. There were no jokes in this film. Not one. The whole 'cat-face' thing was, I assume, unintentionally funny. There were a few one liners said by the rest of the cast, but they were delivered so lifelessly that they pretty much slipped past without anyone noticing. In fact, the cast (not including Jackie Early Haley) seemed to have come from the 'Twilight School of Not Acting'. They went out of their way to make the girl look like a more psycho/emo version of 'Bella Swan'. And don't get me started on the guy. He freaking looked like the real-life Rock Lee from Naruto!

Lastly was the overall plot change. Freddy is still killing teens in their dreams...but now he's also a child molester!!! He even had his own little 'pedo lair' down in the basement of the school. The pedo bit popped up so abruptly that it caught me totally by surprise. It was completely unnecessary to make that sort of leap with Freddy's character. It made everyone uncomfortable in the theater, so much so that a few people walked out. It took an already bad movie and made it unwatchable.

Overall, the producers and writers should be ashamed of themselves for not being able to make a simple slasher film, remake or not. This move is not worth the film it was shot with and all copies should be destroyed...which is sad because Jackie Earl Haley was a fairly decent Freddy.

0 Stars