Deja Reboot: One bad "Nightmare"

When "A Nightmare on Elm Street" was first released in 1984, the film's villain Freddy Krueger struck fear in audiences around the nation. It contained an original story that hadn't been done before and a new kind of villain that could torture you and physically kill you in your dreams. Director Wes Craven was genius to bring this new twist of horror to life. Not to mention Robert Englund made a very terrifying Freddy Krueger. As previously mentioned, the thing that made the original so terrifying is that we'd never seen a villain like Freddy before. When we think of sleeping, we think of being at peace and it is our one time to ultimately relax and let go of all of our worries. However, this film takes that away from us. Craven took something that the body needs to physically function (sleep) and made it a place to be feared. On top of that, "Nightmare" was also a great film in general because of its' relatable characters and the complexity of Freddy himself as a character.

That being said, the remake was a semi-faithful adaptation in the visual sense, but it did manage to try and tie up loose ends that might not have been made clear in the original. In other words, there was an amount of over-exposition. Exposition is good, over-exposition is bad. The story behind Freddy in the original is that he was a child rapist and the parents of the town hunted him down and killed him. In this case, it was Nancy's mom describing to us what had happened, which explains why Freddy is trying to kill Nancy (our heroine). However, it is not made clear why he is killing her friends. The remake takes it one step further by trying to connect all of the characters in order to explain why Freddy wants to kill them all.

Here is where the reboot fails. It tries to take an original story and add to it so much that it ends up adding too much. There is no sense of mystery. The lack of mystery does not end there though. In the original, Freddy's face is kept mostly in the shadows until the end of the film. This adds a very creepy atmosphere to the film and makes Freddy's character even more frightening. However, in the remake, Freddy is completely exposed. There is no attempt to hide his mangled features in order to taunt the audience. (not to mention the "new" Freddy did not look nearly as frightening. He looked like an animal.)

In conclusion, the reboot was not quite as bad as I expected to be, but the original trumps it by a long shot.