As a remake of *A Nightmare on Elm Street*, it's absolutely terrible. Freddy looks like a burned reptile and his voice never fits with the lips, it's all pre-recorded modified voice stuff. The kills are so unimaginative and bland, bad dream sequences and terrible effects. It doesn't even have practical effects for most of them, which is what made the charm of the whole franchise up to this point. They recreated so many moments from the original and made them a lot less interesting. So much embarassing crappy dialogue in the third act. I do like the characters and actors playing Nancy and Quentin here though.

As a stand-alone horror movie it's very bland but not terrible. There's some aspects I enjoyed, like the backstory they gave Freddy. There was a lot of stuff that made absolutely no sense in that flashback (like why would he intentionally leave marks on the person, you just gave yourself up you idiot). It's still a dumb backstory but it makes the villain hateable and that's something the original didn't have. It's a movie that takes itself seriously though, devoid of any fun like the original was so it makes sense the villain is downright evil. Feflecting that, this movie would maybe work if it was actually scary... it's not. It's just a poor version that takes away the fun, laughs and camp from the original but has nothing else to compensate.

Perfect final few seconds?!

***A more realistic and morose version of the original film & franchise***

The specter of a dead pedophile fatally haunts the dreams of the children of his self-appointed executioners who burned him to death years earlier.

Released in 2010, this is a reboot of the original 1984 movie, freely throwing in elements from other flicks in the franchise. I think Jackie Earle Haley works well as creepy Freddy Krueger and I like the more realistic tone, which some say makes movie bland and boring. Rooney Mara (Nancy) and Kyle Gallner (Quentin) are decent as the main protagonists and I think the bedroom scene is superior to the same attack scene in the original; it’s more shocking. The prison scene’s great too.

Unfortunately, the concept of Freddy is a bit of a mess. For instance, his bladed-glove is never explained. And what was the point of the boiler room since he was just a gardener at a small preschool? The filmmakers just threw in these elements because it's Freddy, figuring people knew the character. But how do these components fit into THIS movie? And what about viewers who never saw the original flicks?

The film runs 1 hours, 35 minutes and was shot in northern Illinois and nearby Gary, Indiana, with reshoots done in Los Angeles.

GRADE: B-/C+

This is a pretty movie. Its apparent from the start, that this remake of the 1984 classic, has a pretty good sized budget to work with. In fact the budget for this incarnation was $35 Million according to Wikipedia. The budget for the Wes Craven original, $1.8 Million. You don't always get a better movie if your budget is huge, look at Avatar. You just get a really pretty movie that looks polished and has flawless special effects. Again, see Avatar. That movie was nothing but flash. The story is unoriginal and weak... and don't try coming at me with this whole "Shut up man! Avatar proved itself!" shut up! The larger budget in this case makes the movie look too polished to be takes seriously. Why the hell are we caring about watching clones of the Twilight teens being chased by Freddy Kruger? Were not. This movie didn't need a budget of $35 Million. It feels wasted. Some of the appeal of the original came from watching the director be a director and figure scenes out. This movie didn't do that. It felt trite and forced.

Freddy Kruger is less of a movie villain in the horror industry and more of an icon. Everyone I knew growing up all had Freddy Kruger nightmares when they were a kid. Perhaps this new version of Freddy will serve to scare the shit out of kids these days. I would hope so. Maybe when they remake this movie again in twenty years they will bitch about it then as well. Who knows.

I really liked this new nightmare. I wish there was more action in it but still pretty good. I hope this is the start of a new Freddy movie series.