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Freddy, Set, Go

The world is pretty familiar with Freddy Kruger, who arrived on the scene in 1985's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and went on to become an icon of contemporary horror. With his burn-scarred face, ratty striped sweater, and deadly razor-tipped glove, Freddy debuted as a genuinely frightening dream-conjured boogeyman in his first film. However, subsequent films (there were seven in all, plus a tv series) accentuated his turn toward ghoulish comedy, a la EC Comics and "Tales From the Crypt" - violence was served up with wisecrack or pun, and the character's frightening impact was diluted as a result. With this year's remake of the original "Nightmare", the filmmakers had an opportunity to strip the story down to its original components, explore what made it a compelling tale in the first place, and restore Freddy Kruger to his rightful place in our darkest dreams. Sadly, that opportunity is squandered.

What we have instead is an unworkable mash-up of many of the trappings of the original story, plus the jokey Freddy Kruger of the later sequels, minus any real sense of suspense or a driving need to solve a mystery or get to the bottom of what is going on. For those not already familiar with the story - and I'll bet there are some of you out there - here are the basics: teenagers are getting killed in their sleep, and insomnia is a big part of the problem. The teens say that a man is attacking them in their dreams. Their parents know more about the situation than they will admit. It turns out to have something to do with a terrible thing that happened in the past (doesn't it always?) and a specter bent on revenge.

Why try to reboot this series? Well, there are some strong story elements here worthy of a revisit. The original explored fears of being vulnerable during sleep, and unresolved guilt over past crimes wreaking havoc in the present. It raised issues about being at the mercy of one's own body: if you fall asleep, you will be killed, and you simply can't stay awake forever. And it made effective use of a great horror trope: the kids are fighting a battle with their very lives at stake, and the parents are ineffectual and oblivious; the kids are on their own. So, why remake the original and take so many missteps along the way? What should have been the best and strongest element of this film, the casting of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Kruger, is sadly squandered. Mr. Haley has a voice made for horror movies, and a way of finding shreds of empathy in utterly unlikeable characters. Having such a strong character actor play what amounts to a two-dimensional ghoul is such a waste. The brief segment showing some of Freddy's back story, when it comes, is by far the most interesting thing in the film, and it makes the present day action all the more dull and lacking by comparison.

Mr. Haley isn't helped out much by the young cast who play the protagonists/victims. Rooney Mara is Nancy, the heroine who is the focus of Freddy's most uncomfortable attentions. Ms. Mara mumbles many of her lines, and seems strangely removed from the action. She lacks the righteous outrage that Heather Langenkamp brought to the role in the original film. Kyle Gallner fares better as Quentin, the fellow student who works with Nancy to find out why their peers are being killed. Thomas Dekker, who showed promise as a young John Connor in TV's "Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles", doesn't bring much to his role as Jesse, who is initially accused of one of Freddy's killings. Rounding out the quartet of high-schoolers is Katie Cassidy as Kris. Unfortunately, Ms. Cassidy is so perfectly coiffed and spray-tanned that she seems less like a genuine high school student and more like an NFL cheerleader forced to repeat the 11th grade.

The story proceeds along perfunctory lines, with everyone being kind of interested in finding out what is going on, but not displaying a whole lot of self-interest in the outcome. What is quite strange is the lack of a tabula rasa setup at the beginning of the film. There never seems to be a starting point when the characters are completely without knowledge of who Freddy Kruger is and why he is in their dreams. Understandably, there is the expectation that many viewers are going to bring pop culture knowledge of the Freddy character with them when seeing this film, but if the filmmakers are going to let that knowledge permeate their characters from the opening shot, then why bother to remake the original film at all? Why not just jump ahead and remake, say, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master"?

By far the oddest choice in this remake is the renewed focus on Freddy Kruger as an accused child molester. The script plays keep-away with the knowledge of whether Freddy is guilty or was unjustly accused, but this doesn't heighten the suspense or aid in character development; it just makes the script feel badly written. The question of guilt is answered (spoilers here) and leads to an incredibly ill-conceived sequence where Nancy finds her teenaged self held down on a bed, clothed in an approximation of a white pinafore dress that she wore when she was a child; as Freddy tells her, it was always his "favorite". Freddy alternately menaces and tries to seduce her, and when she protests, he sneers, "Your mouth says no, but your body says yes". The doubling effect here is squeamish, to say the least: the implication is that of a grown man saying this to a five year old. It's both Hollywood preposterous and deeply disturbing, and the overlay of jokey humor in some of the other dialogue in this scene is yet another reason why this film is so misguided. It's a huge misstep in a film full of missteps. And sadly, of course, the door is left open for the inevitable sequel.