During the 80's horror movies were a booming genre. We had iconic characters such as Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhese, Leatherface and even little old Chucky. Then you had your cult horror films like The Hills Have Eyes, My Bloody Valentine, The Crazies, Last House on the Left and The Fog. You could say that the horror genre was at the height of it's career. Horror films aren't for everyone for obvious reasons, but if your like me and you are a horror fan, you know what it takes to make a good slasher flick. Back then they had everything needed to be a successful horror film; lots of death scenes, plenty of gore and late night trips to the lake, if you get my drift.
Now flashforward twenty years later and where is the horror genre at? Well, during the nineties we had the Scream trilogy, which I loved and I think was ok for its time. Then in the early 2000's we had The Ring and the fifty films after it that copied the same exact story. Now at the back end of the 2000's, all we have are remakes of the eighties films we loved and torture type films like Saw, Hostel, Turistas and Wolf Creek. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Hills Have Eyes and The Crazies were all well done, but Halloween, The Fog Last House On the Left, My Bloody Valentine and the now apparently turned comedy Chucky series were all disappointments....especially the Chucky films.
So now all we had left to remake was Freddy Krueger, one of the biggest horror characters of the eighties. They ditched Robert Englund who portrayed Freddy for the first eight films and brought on Jackie Earle Haley as the new Freddy. I think that was a good move. If your remaking the franchise, you want to take it back to its dark roots. As the films progressed, Freddy became more of a comedic killer than a scary, ruthless one. I thought that Haley would do justice to what Englund brought to the character for so many years. He tried his best, but unfortunately they just didn't give him much to do.
The main story is pretty much the same as the original. Fred Kruger is abusing children at a local pre school, and after the parents of the students hunt down and kill Krueger, he begins to kill the now grown up children by entering their dreams.
I'm not sure really where to begin with where all this movie goes wrong. We'll start with Freddy. People will go to this film to see Freddy, not the CW actors that make up the cast, Freddy is the star. What they do for the first hour is really just tease you with Krueger. They will show him for a quick second and then wait a while and throw him in again for a brief moment. People want to see him and I was really annoyed sitting there waiting for him to actually show up on screen for more than a minute. Secondly, was the CGI used to redesign his face. Is it really that hard these days to put make-up on someone as opposed to just using special effects. I liked that they were trying to bring something new to the table to redesign his look, but not how they just threw some special effects on there and was done with it.
The cast was horrific. I hate how all these horror remakes turn to the CW Network to find their talent now. The lines were delivered incredibly bad and you couldn't help but to laugh at the characters, because they were all dressed up as your now popular emo, goth kids with the exception of one of the characters. There was no diversity to the characters, they were all the same.
But my main problem with the film was with the story. As I said before, people go to these movies to see the killer and to watch the death scenes. In this film, there were only three death scenes besides one at the very end, which didn't count in my opinion. The Friday the 13th remake had five deaths in the first fifteen minutes. And it just wasn't the low death count, but the uncreative ways they did them. I was bored with them all. I was never on the edge of my seat, I was never gripping my armrest waiting for the big jump and I was never clenching my teeth at the "gruesome" scene I was watching.
This was a remake, but all the iconic scenes from the original were taken out of the film or ruined. The classic Johnny Depp scene, gone. One of the scenes from the original that made it into this film was done so horribly wrong, the audience actually ended up laughing during the entire scene as opposed to the horror effect that it was supposed to have.
It really looks like good horror films are a thing of the past now. Studios refuse to pay for good writers, directors or talent that is worth watching. This film is a good example of how bad the genre has become over the past 20-30 years. If you put in a little, you will get a little.
This is a key example as to why you don't let someone who's only credentials are directing music videos tackle a big name project like this. I enjoyed absolutely nothing about this film and give it a 1 out of 5.
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Agree it was garbage!!!!
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