Dream On

Michael Bay continues to murder the classics
By
Morgan P Salvo


Producer Michael Bay is on a murder spree. He is systematically slaughtering remakes of classic horror/slasher movies from the 70s-80s in a churned out torture-porn-slam-bang fashion. He has destroyed what was good about Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left, and Friday the Thirteenth and now, true to form, has revised A Nightmare on Elm Street to new slice and dice levels of schlock and mediocrity.
Elm Street was created by Wes Craven (Hills Have Eyes, Scream) in 1984, franchising into nine slasher films, a television show, novels, and comic books. In case you’re from Mars, here’s the plot: a group of teens suddenly seem to share the same nightmare involving a scary guy in a red-and-green-striped tattered sweater and fedora. Serial killer/monster Freddy Kruger wielding a glove with knives as fingers is stalking and killing people in their dreams, resulting in their real death. Freddy’s seeking revenge on his victim’s parents, who had burned him alive years before for being a child molester.
Incorporating Bay’s brazen tactics, music video director Samuel Bayer (Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit) helms his first feature, with a colorful pulsating panache. But there are no surprises. Bayer tamely duplicates many visual cues and effects sequences from the original: bathtub claw, morphing wall, flying bodies, swarms of blood, finger-blade sparks and the irritating fingernails on a blackboard sound effects. Keeping at an eerie drive-in pace, Nightmare builds some nice suspense here and there but all the scare scenes are done in by a relentless and ultimately predictable amount of shocks-from-nowhere; the equivalent of hiding and at the last moment yelling BOO!
New screenwriter Eric Heisserer and veteran Wesley Strick (responsible for new-aging Scorsese’s Cape Fear) show considerable restraint, following the formulaic horror film genre. However they skip from one idea to the next sending mixed messages and metaphors. The idiotic sub-plot gives us no rationale behind the kids’ multiple memory loss about abuse, allowing for Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew investigating that goes nowhere fast. Not to mention a lamely depicted back story of the demise of pedophile Kruger.
The acting throughout looks misdirected, but most of the teens are believable at angst-ridden, frightened and spewing blood. Clancy Brown shows up as an unrealistically concerned parent, high-schoolers Kyle Gallner (the permanently sad faced kid from Haunting in Connecticut) sports a Joy Division T-shirt to let us know he’s hip, and heroine Rooney Mara looks like she’s already graduated from college.
Jack Earle Haley follows in the footsteps of Robert Englund’s Freddy, who got campier with each sequel, finally becoming a mere caricature. Here Nightmare doesn’t allow Hailey much more than to grunt like a burn-victim ghoul. He just seems like a dripping-faced runt in a striped sweater with an ax to grind, and the fedora has never been explained.
The blurred line between dreams and reality has always been fascinating. But that concept is merely just tapped into here and not unleashed. The notion that a boogeyman can go from nightmare to nightmare, appearing anywhere at any time wreaking havoc with every rip of his razor hand, should be a never ending creative field day for filmmakers. Luis Buñuel, the great surrealist filmmaker who worked with Salvador Dali, once said of his films “when in doubt… put in a dream sequence.” Wes Craven knew this. The concept of people being killed in their dreams corresponding with their real life death and the impossibility of staying awake as the only way to avoid their own gruesome murder is true genius.
Still genuinely creepy this somber gory remake might hold its own as a new feature if we weren’t so inundated with the Kruger saga or if it brought something new, rather than following Bay’s predictable formula. As dormant as Nightmare was, I wasn’t afraid to fall asleep or wake up dead. Let's just say this Elm Street won't cause any nightmares.

A Nightmare on Elm Street
Starring Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Clancy Brown
Directed by Samuel Bayer
2 ½ stars