A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Like a reoccurring dream, A Nightmare on Elm Street was always going to come back to haunt our screens. With 8 films featuring Freddy from Wes Craven’s original to 2003’s monster mash-up Freddy vs. Jason, this 2010 remake of the 1984 sleep stalking slasher sets about to prove Kruger has 9 lives, and bring the nightmare to a whole new generation.
After producing reboots of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th the money making machine that is Michael Bay was determined to dig up another franchise, dress it up in fashionable clothes and pop culture references and resell it to the mindless masses. A Nightmare on Elm Street was the obvious choice.
For those unaware of the story, it involves a group of kids all living on the titular Elm 
Street and all plagued by the same nightmares involving the same man. With his horrifically disfigured face, half hidden by a tattered hat, burnt, striped sweater and a glove with knives for fingers, he terrorizes the teenagers dreams where his rules are law.
When one of the gang dies a violent death, the others soon realise that what happens when they sleep may actually be happening for real. A secret from the past binds the friends together to the dream-stalking-psychopath. But with no answers from their parents and no help from anyone else, they must fight to find the truth while fighting to stay awake before Freddy Kruger makes their nightmares a reality.
Craven’s first foray into Freddy’s realm is a masterpiece of tension and invention. With spectacular killings, a great story and the origin of an iconic movie monster. Spawning a TV series (Freddy’s Nightmares) along with countless novels, comics and tie-ins, although the subsequent films were hit and miss (see Jonesy’s article for more info – A Nightmare On Elm Street – Looking back to look forward… ) Craven’s creation captured the audience and firmly cemented Freddy into horror history as an iconic character.
‘Enough of the history lesson’ I hear you cry, what about the reboot? Well that’s the problem this movie, it’s not the reboot it wants to be. Sadly it’s not a re-imagining or even a remix, it’s more of a cover version.
Perhaps it’s an homage, perhaps its laziness, perhaps Craven just did it best, but for anyone who has seen the original film, any fear or frights will be replaced with distracting déjà vu. Scene after scene, the same scares and shots appear straight from the original movie.
The glove in the bath, the body bag in the school corridor, Freddy coming through the wall all classic moments, all chillingly brilliant in the original and all replicated here with little variation.
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