"Can you change the past? Can you bring the dead back to life? I didn't fuckin' think so!"
Love 'em or hate 'em, remakes are a major part of cinema right now and no more than in the horror genre. There are some films that many horror fans consider to be untouchable; films that should never be remade and amongst those I believe you'd find "A Nightmare On Elm Street". You could argue all day long about how Hollywood has no original ideas left and that this is why they have turned to rehashing older and often much better ideas or you could get over yourself and give these movies a chance. Not that they are all winners, some of them suck really, REALLY bad (I'm looking at you "The Fog") but some of them are down right awesome (2004's "Dawn of the Dead). By now, anyone familiar with the horror genre knows who Freddy Krueger is. He is as much an icon today as Dracula, Frankenstein or the Mummy. This time around, we get a vaguely familiar Freddy except with a little more detail on his history prior to becoming the cripsy critter we all know and love. Freddy was a groundskeeper/gardner at a local daycare, which rested innocently enough at the end of...yep, you guessed it, Elm St. Seems some of the kids accused Freddy of touching them in all the wrong places and the parents chased him down and burnt him alive. Now he haunts the dreams of the children of the parents responsible for his murder, picking them off one by one. Is Freddy guilty or was he falsley accused; the impressionable children coerced into telling a false truth. This is the crux of this new Nightmare and overall it works pretty well. You could probably guess how this ends and what the truth may or may not be but I won't ruin it for you here.
Despite some dumbed down dialog and cliched teen characters, the film mostly succeeds. The Freddy make up is awesome and crazy realistic and Jackie Earle Haley's performance as Krueger is the highlight of this film...even if he still sounds like Rorschach. 3/5 -andy
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