With Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes rolling through reboots of horror franchises like Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was only a matter of time before the production company focused a remake on Freddy Krueger.
Though it’s not saying much, Samuel Bayer’s A Nightmare on Elm Street is better than those three, a startling slasher that pays enough homage to the original and scares up enough fresh material to satisfy horror purists and newcomers alike.
As a “re-imagining” of Wes Craven’s 1984 classic, Bayer borrows a few familiar sequences, such as the trio of creepy kids playing jump rope and the clawed hand of Krueger emerging in a soapy bath between the legs of a sleep-deprived protagonist.
Like the first, Nancy (played by Rooney Mara) leads a group of teenagers who discover they share a recurring nightmare of a mysterious figure with knives for hands and a catchy theme song. No one fesses up when Dean (Kellan Lutz) looks like Hell in the local diner, but soon they come to realize someone, or something, is terrorizing them while they dream.
Nancy trades concerned lines with her mother (Connie Britton) and plays off the perpetually pained expression of her classmate flame, Quentin (Kyle Gallner) while Kris (Katie Cassidy) and Jesse (Thomas Dekker) try their lids at the brilliant plan “don’t fall asleep!”
After eight installments featuring Robert Englund as the iconic Freddy Krueger, Jackie Earle Haley confidently dons the fedora and striped sweater to stalk the sleeping and deliver his own brand of one-liner humor. 
Advancements in make-up and special effects render his scarring more grotesque, but there’s enough Haley underneath to get a sense of his smirking, growling rendition of the character.
While Englund’s frightening killer was more playful with his prey, Haley’s Krueger is darker and angrier in the context of his origins. The film fleshes out his story more through flashbacks, depicting a mop-haired Fred developing a relationship with the neighborhood pre-schoolers before venturing into the chilling darkness of a highly inappropriate realm. When the town learns of his extra-curricular activities, Krueger is cornered in an abandoned building and burned alive. Years later he haunts those children who banished him to the nightmare.
While Bayer overuses the sudden screech technique for easy jumps, his film contains some legitimate scares among the more disturbing material. It’s also the bloodiest of all the remakes, drenching its kill scenes in spurting crimson from Freddy’s slashing hand. The transitions from awake to asleep are smooth, especially as the characters grow less aware of what’s real and what’s imagined, which draws the audience into the uneasiness.
2010′s A Nightmare on Elm Street is shocking and scary. It’s a shame it will forever be compared to Craven’s classic.
3.5 out of 5.
Update: I realized Platinum Dunes didn’t do Halloween, but you get the point. I apologize for the confusion.
