There's a new movie sub genre called the 'retro re-make'. Take a hit franchise from the 80s and re-boot it with new actors and the latest SFX.
It's not Nightmare On Elmo's Street or Nightmare On St Elmo's Fire. But it could be called How Freddy Got His Groove.
A Nightmare On Elm Street in 2010 has a new fired up melted maniacal mad man played by Jackie Earle Haley. He's scary enough – grabbed a few lessons from Batman's voice coach who may have picked up an Oscar for coaching Darth Vader. But until the 3rd act, he lacked the humour of 1984's Robert Englund who just loved taunting teenagers. This new Freddy isn't so much scary as he is creepy – he's bit of a paedophile which doesn't make him the uber cool villain we love to be scared of as our little peepers droop shut and the fun nightmares begin. They didn't need to make him such a sicko to be scary. We still want to love to see the guy appear on screen. His previous criminal record destroys his cred.
So what's good about it?
TICK – opening title sequence is sensational.
TICK – music score is haunting and A grade.
TICK – storyline is a genuine mystery for the first 2 acts and remind us old Goths how much fun it would be to attend the High School For Emos. Maybe they should have called this movie Nightmare On Emo Street.
TICK – dialogue has its moments: 'try to get some sleep' has never sounded so innocently menacing.
TICK – I wondered how Edward Scissorhands could have turned so bad (now that would have been a better back story than FK being a child molester).
TICK – is this movie a warning about how you can fatally harm yourself when you become sleep deprived due to say, prolonged and over use of amphetamines, speed, crack, meth and ice?
XXX – or is this movie advocating teenagers take more pills and drugs to keep them awake because bad things happen when you're asleep – like boredom?
TICK – one of the lead characters is named Quentin and there's a nice homage to Pulp Fiction in one of the scene sequences. Maybe that's just me making that correlation.
So as you can see, I give this movie more TICKs than XXXXs – but does that make it good? Well, I had a micro sleep for a nano second hoping Freddy would pay me a visit in the cinema.
He didn't.
Hate to say it folks but – the new FK is good – but the old FK is better.
Nighty night! ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…. Ouch. (Something's a bit scratchy scratchy… )