Blu-Ray/Movie Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

 

This is the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street, directed by Samuel Bayer and starring Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, Rooney Mara, Connie Britton, and Thomas Dekker. The movie is not a shot-for-shot remake of the original, nor is it another sequel. It is a retelling of the original story that pays homage to some of what we saw in the first film but does tell a different version of the story. There is more given to Freddy's back story than just the fact that he was a child murderer that was told in the original movie. His origin is much more fleshed out in this movie. Secondly, they have dropped the one-liners and jokes out of Freddy's persona (for the most part) and he is much more the sinister boogieman-like character he was in the first movie. While it is definitely weird not to hear Robert Englund's voice, the fact that they were making Freddy even darker in this movie than in most of the other sequels to the original movie allowed me to more easily accept Jackie Earle Haley in that role.

Pretty much all of the teenage characters (and even the parents) in this movie were different than their versions in the original movie. For example, this version of Nancy (played by Mara) was totally different than the version of the character played by Heather Langenkamp, and the role of her father (played by John Saxon in the original film) was omitted altogether. There are also some totally new characters added to this version who were not in the original movie. It takes a while to get used to the changes in the story and the characters, although, as I said, some of the shots from the original movie (like the glove coming up between Nancy's legs in the bathtub, the dragging across the ceiling, Freddy's shape materializing from the wall) are remade in this one.

The Blu-ray's A/V quality is great, and of course, it has much better effects than the original movies, although they did not go overboard with the CGI effects. As far as extras go, there are several behind-the-scenes and making-of featurettes, a couple of deleted scenes, and an alternate ending. There is also a commentary track and an in-movie mode where pop-ups will play throughout the movie at certain points. 

Like all remakes of classic movies, some are going to love this, and some will hate it. That is the nature of recreating a movie like Nightmare on Elm Street, which was one of the iconic 1980s horror movies that spawned 7 direct movies and a crossover with the Friday the 13th franchise, and more importantly, when recasting an iconic character like Freddy. If the whole idea of changing anything around from the original movies is like sacrilege to you, then don't even bother with this. If you can accept that there are changes to the story and the characters, then this, while not as good as the original movie, is still better than some of the cheesier sequels of the original movie and is worth the time to watch.

Blu-Ray/Movie Collection Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street Collection

 

This set contains the seven "main" Nightmare on Elm Street movies, including the 1984 original movie, 1985's Part 2 (Freddy's Revenge), 1987's Part 3 (Dream Warriors), 1988's Part 4 (The Dream Master), 1989's Part 5 (The Dream Child), 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, and 1994's Wes Craven's New Nightmare. The original film was written and directed by Wes Craven and starred Robert Englund (in the iconic role of Freddy Kruger), Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thomson, Johnny Depp (in his first movie role), and John Saxon. Craven would mostly bow out of the series until the final movie, New Nightmare, which he also wrote and directed (although he was a co-writer of the screenplay for Part III). Langenkamp would appear in three of the seven movies, and Englund appeared in all of them. This set does not contain the Freddy vs. Jason crossover movie with Friday the 13th, nor does it have the 2010 remake. All of the movies are centered around Freddy Kruger, who was a serial killer of children in life and who, after he was burned alive by the parents of the town he lived in, was able to return as a supernatural killer who could enter and kill in a person's dreams.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was one of the definitive horror movie franchises in the 1980s. It definitely suffered from what almost all of the series, like Halloween and Friday the 13th, did: It got too bloated and too goofy, to the point where there were more bad movies in the series than good ones. The one constant throughout, however, was the fact that Robert Englund made Freddy cool and funny and maximized his time on the screen. Not surprisingly, the three best movies were the ones in which Heather Langenkamp was involved either playing Nancy (in Parts I and  II) or herself (In a New Nightmare). Also not surprisingly the two best were the first and last movies in the series where Wes Craven was directly involved as the writer and director. In fact, the best movie of the series, in my opinion, was the final film, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which blended the fictional characters with the lives of real-life actors. In fact in that movie Freddy probably had the least "personality" but was far scarier when he was onscreen.

This is a five-disc set (Parts 4 and 5 share a single disc, as does Freddy's Dead and A New Nightmare). The movies all look okay on Blu-ray. Given how old they are and the fact that most of the movies were made before CGI was really well developed, most of the movies do not look anywhere near as good as more recent movies do (and HD sometimes amplifies the fakeness of the effects). Some of the effects are pretty cheesy, and although I think they did about as good a job with the transfer absent a complete restoration as possible, there are limitations with movies this old. The original movie is on its own disc, then each subsequent disc has two movies. 

Each of the discs has bonus content for the movie or movies on that particular disc. The last disc is a DVD of bonus material that has between 3 and 4 hours of additional bonus content. It looks like most (but not all) of the bonus material was carried over from the various DVD releases that have been put out over time, as opposed to newly created for this release. The first movie has the most bonus content, and then it tails off somewhat after that. Most of the bonus material is behind-the-scenes features with the actors or filmmakers of the particular movies. Each movie has at least one commentary track and then there are some deleted and alternate scenes for some of the movies. The Bonus DVD also includes a couple episodes from the (really bad) Nightmare on Elm Street TV series. and some more behind the story kind of features.  All in all though, if you are a more casual fan of the series and do not need every single extra in existence and just mainly want the movies, then it is worth adding to your collection.