A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Warner Home Video
Blu-ray Disc Released: 10/5/2010

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Review by Mike Long, Posted on 10/19/2010

Available on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD, On Demand and for Download!

Trust me, when I go into a movie, I try to be as open-minded as possible and leave any pre-conceptions behind. However, that was a huge challenge when I sat down to watch the new A Nightmare on Elm Street. The term "unnecessary sequel" gets thrown around a lot (especially by me), and I was afraid that I would be applying it to this film as well. While the seemingly endless sequels to the original had been one thing, a reportedly fresh take on the characters didn't sound like a wise idea. Still, I tried to reserve judgment and give the new one a chance.

As A Nightmare on Elm Street opens, a teenaged boy named Dean (Kellan Lutz), commits suicide in a diner. At his funeral, his friends, Kris (Katie Cassidy), Quentin (Kyle Gallner), Nancy (Rooney Mara), and Jesse (Thomas Dekker), discuss the fact that Dean had mentioned having terrible nightmares and hadn't been sleeping. Following this, the other kids begin having intense nightmares in which they are stalked by a burned man who wears an old hat and a dirty sweater. When more bizarre deaths occur, Nancy begins to investigate the connection between real-life and the nightmares and learns that a man named Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley). It becomes obvious that falling asleep will be deadly. How long can they stay awake?

I would like to approach my review of A Nightmare on Elm Street as a separate film and not compare it to the original...but that's simply not possible. I saw Wes Craven's original film in the theater way back when and I was blown away by how the film took the popular slasher plot-line and combined it with supernatural elements. And what could be scarier than the idea that someone wanted to kill you in your sleep when you couldn't defend yourself? The Freddy Krueger character soon became a cultural icon and Freddy went from being scary to being slap-sticky. Craven himself attempted to fix this with Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Given this history, I had mixed feelings about a re-boot. The idea of someone brining back a scary Freddy was acceptable, but not if they spat on the memory of the original film. Well, talk about your worst nightmare come true...

The movie's other great crime is that this Freddy isn't scary. Again, the backstory puts too much of a human face on Freddy and he isn't enough of a monster. Also, the finale dwells far too much on the "child molester" angle. This Freddy isn't scary, he's just creepy. Instead of running from him, you simply want to move down one seat and use some Purell. Also, I'm not crazy about the new makeup. I like the idea that he lost his lips in the fire (that looks authentic), but he has too much of a Siamese cat look. Again, not scary.

I'm also disappointed in the look of the film. Director Samuel Bayer has made a career directing some pretty famous music videos, staring with Nirvana's "Smell's Like Teen Spirit", and A Nightmare on Elm Street is his feature film debut. I'm not sure why he waited so long taking a movie directing gig, but he doesn't bring much to the table here. Other than the shot of Kris in the classroom, which is in the trailer, I can't think of any other visual from the movie which stuck with me.

I wouldn't call the new A Nightmare on Elm Street a disaster, but it comes close. Actually, the movie is too benign and innocuous to be a disaster, it's simply a bad movie. Even when not compared to the original, the pacing is slack, the character's dull and the action predictable. This movie sullies the franchise name and I hope that Michael Bay and company will one day learn their lesson concerning remakes. (But, of course, as long as the money keeps coming in, they won't.)

A Nightmare on Elm Street makes stealing pharmaceuticals look rather easy on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Warner Home Video. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains a VC-1 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 19 Mbps. The image is very sharp and clear, showing no notable grain and no defects from the source materials. The movie has a dark look, but the image is never overly dark and the colors look good -- the action is always visible. The image shows off nice detail we can make out the textures on surfaces. There is also a good amount of depth here. The Disc offers a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. Once again, bad movie, good audio. The stereo effects are quite good, most notably when the kids are being stalked and we can hear noises coming from off-screen. The surround sound effects are nearly constant and show great separation. The subwoofer action is abundant as well, and tries to add some "oomph!" to the scare scenes.

The A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray Disc contains a selection of extras. The viewer can choose to watch the film with "WB Maniacal Movie Mode" which offers picture-in-picture comments from the filmmakers and cast, as well as behind-the-scenes footage. We also get to see the original opening being shot. The Disc contains seven "Focus Points" which look at various aspects of the movie; "Makeup Makes the Character", "Micronaps", "The Hat", "Practical Fire", "The Sweater", "The Glove", and "The Victims". These brief pieces (2-3 minutes) contains on-set footage and comments from the filmmakers. "Freddy Krueger Reborn" (14 minutes) is a making of featurette which explores how the filmmakers approached re-creating such as iconic character. We get opinions from everyone involved and behind-the-scenes footage. "Additional Footage" contains three scenes (with no PLAY ALL). This contains an alternate opening (which is different from the one glimpsed in "Maniacal Movie Mode") for which no explanation is given (is that Freddy) and an alternate ending which plays just like the ending in the film, but without the Freddy makeup.