A Nightmare on Elm Street: One, two, this remake is nothing new!

Nancy and her friends are having problems sleeping. They are being haunted by a man with knives for fingers who has a strong desire to do them harm.

Unfair or not, this film is going to draw comparisons to the 1984 modern masterpiece of the same name by director Wes Craven. The director of the remake, Samuel Bayer, was able to utilize superior sets, subtle CGI and other visual goodies in order to give this version of Nightmare a very slick look and some impressive visuals. Jackie Earle Haley produced his own unique take on the infamous movie monster Freddy Krueger. Whereas Robert Englund’s (the actor who portrayed Freddy in the original) Krueger carried a Joker - ish glee when he stalked the teenagers in the original, Haley was just creepy with a capital "C" and more apt to mangle than crack wise. Even though Haley’s Freddy was more vicious in the remake, there were not many scares to be had as the jumps were predictable and standard for newer horror films (which seem more concerned with showing buckets of blood rather than merely hinting at mayhem and letting the audiences’ imaginations fill in the nasty details). In the end, what separated these two films was the fact that the original had some sustenance behind its story whereas the remake lacked not only in story but in characters as well. The original had an underpinning of social commentary in that the story seemed to be exploring the disintegration of the American household thanks to divorce and other factors unique to the Reagan Era. In order for Nancy’s mother to deal with the implosion of her life, she turned to alcohol and drugs, and expected her daughter to do the same when her friend’s started dying. But Nancy (an ultra whiny but still affective Heather Langenkamp) was willing to take on the problem of facing Freddy and not slip into the bottle. The result of this was that the audience (teenagers for the most part) were better able to relate to Nancy’s struggle for self-preservation and root for her while at the same time have the bejesus scared out of them. The Nancy in the remake (played by Rooney Mara), had little to no personality and, again, the story focused more on the many ways Freddy could dispatch the teens as opposed to drawing in the audience with a substantial story to punctuate the scares.

In light of this, it begs the question, why remake a superior horror film when you cannot hope to top it?

Grade: D+