The remake of A nightmare on Elm Street was the first of the double bill.
Samuel Bayer, a music promo director opens his filmography with this remake/re-boot of the classic horror film. With a cast of the new hollywood teen pack, I got something I liked in places, disliked in others and ended up stuck in the middle.
The burnt face and knife weilding dream monster is brought back to life by Jackie Earle Haley, and this I liked, his Krueger is much more meanacing, and I think a little more frightening than the original. The deaths are more violent and also the lack of Kruegers one liners help to make him much more sinister. We also get to see more of the back story which lead to these events. Though I'm not sure that was presented in the right way in the end!
The rest of the cast look pretty, act dumb and get killed! Nobody stands out, but the script and the story do hold them back. Rooney Mara the new Nancy is not in the league of Heather Langenkamp and I always struggled to connect with these characters.
The look of the film is great, especially some of the dream sequences, the music was good and we had buckets of blood. But what we lacked was any tension, as meanacing as Kueger was, I had no feelings for the kids of Elm street so when freddie did come for them, I didn't care! And that's the problem!
So overall I liked it, well some of it, just keeps into.... (6/10)
Freddy, Freddy, Freddy. Not sure about this one. The original was a classic but the remake could easily fallen flat. Well it had it's ups and downs. The basic premise was still the same and some of the scenes had been kept. Changes included Freddies back story which was given a little more substance. Not sure who played Freddy better (Englund did make the character his own) but the newer version had more menece. No stand out perfomances all basic and by the book. They did keep the creepy music though. 6/10
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