Nightmare on Elm Street and the Death of Dreams

Growing up I didn't care for most slasher flicks. Jason Voorhees and Myers, just didn't do it for me. Maniac Cop, Silently Night Deadly night, sure they had moments, but I liked actual mosters, vampires, demons, spirits, aliens not just some guy with a gimmick and an axe.

The one exception was the first Nightmare on Elm Street. There were two main reasons for this.

Robert Englund brought a strange charisma to the role. Instead of the silent killing machine he was a wise cracking weirdo. He didn't just kill, he had fun doing it and in ways you don't like to admit, you did too.

The other part was Nancy Thompson. Most of these movies have pretty faceless protagonists, usually some girl who gets away or saves the day on blind luck or lazy writing, but not my Nancy. When she figured out what was going on (unfortunately a little to late for any of her friends) she did something few of the heroes of the time did. She made and executed a brutal plan. She did not beat the monster through magical shenanigans or luck, she laid a trap for him and it worked (minus the hickups that make movies go). She was the proto-Buffy. She looked like the helpless cheerleader until a sledgehammer, some shotgun shells and a few books kids probably shouldn't have turned the fight around. Yeah, there was the cheap trick of dragging fred out of the dream, but that was a logical extrapolation of his interaction with the world.

Ho, here it is some many years later and on a broke and bored friday night, netflix has sent me the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. So how did it hold up? It came in a modest second.

Fred Krueger was surprisingly creepy. It was hard to guess where they would go with Krueger. He had some of the loves his job smart assedness of his predecessor, but he brought a creepiness that made him feel like the stalker freddy was. Gone was the over the top glee that made Krueger a Knott's Berry Farm staple, but now he really made your skin crawl.

But Nancy, poor Nancy lost all of her charm. She didn't plan, scheme and sneak to win, she just won. She didn't own the movie like the old Nancy did. Sure she pulled Krueger out of her dream to get him into the real world, but to paraphrase Dr. Peter Venkman, "Get him!" That was your whole plan, huh, "get him."

I always say that great films have great villains, but they also really need at least ok protagonists. If you can get through the 80s camp, watch the original. The remake is ok, just nothing special.

The one thing I liked about the Nightmare on Elm Street series was the protagonists with at least half-arsed practical drug knowledge. It's a skill that can really kick ass in tough situations - this franchise, to its credit, topping the bill - but you rarely see drugs used in horror movies to create anything but moments of vulnerability or portray a character as morally dubious to set them up for early killing.

I can vaguely remember seeing that movie when it came out, I remember I liked it a lot.......

Love the original, the remake bored me to sleep, literally, and I disliked the plot and the new actor who played Freddy didn't do the character justice.