
I'm not crying. These are not tears in my eyes. I have allergies. Um, so the new NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET…what's going on here people? Are we going to take this lying down? Oh, you used up all your torches and ammunition last summer on ROB ZOMBIE's lively H2? That's just great. Thanks kids, you ran all the pussy cats out of town and now giant rats roam the streets. Great.
O.K. so here's the thing, I know 1984's NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET had some dubious acting and some of the effects don't hold up too good but I just watched it recently and I can tell you that I still find myself BELIEVING in its story. There's a sense of place, I get who the characters are (even if their acting is questionable) and I'm compelled to want to see what happens to them next. It's just good storytelling.
I don't BELIEVE this new polished and skinned version. I don't believe that girl is in high school, I don't believe she dresses and wears her hair like that, I don't believe that's her house, her mom, her friends. I REALLY don't believe that a preschool would hire a creepy guy like Fred Krueger to be their live-in gardener (?) and to room in the school's basement (?) and that he would have private access to the children. This is a universe that doesn't play by any of reality's rules and yet the entire plot hinges on the destruction of such rules but yet they don't even exist in the first place…
Oh boy, I should try to keep this brief because I'm really beginning to worry about my blood pressure, does my face look red? Let's try this from another angle. I just watched THE ENTIRE ELM STREET series back to back and never once did I feel bored. I may have laughed at how crappy some of the later ones now seem but I never wanted to take a nap instead of finishing one. I've never fallen asleep in a theater either, I think that's an insane thing to do but while watching this recent redo of N.O.E.S. I actually felt sleepy and BORED.
Me, BORED! I thought the frickin' HOUSE OF MIRTH was riveting for Christ's sake. I've seen A PASSAGE TO INDIA like 4 times! Do you get what I'm saying here? Someone was able to make a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie that bored me. (NO LIE: I watched an ant carry a dandelion seed across my back yard yesterday, THAT didn't bore me!) How were you able to bore me new NIGHTMARE? How?
PLATINUM DUNES, do you need help? I mean just tell me if you need help writing your screenplays, don't be embarrassed. I don't have much experience but I do have an actual interest in the material. I think I could write at least one memorable line for Freddy to say. I bet I could do that. I'd even do it for free, you don't have to pay me. You know what? Forget about me. Just open your office door and go outside and grab the first person you see and ask them to do it. I think a random person off the street might be able to give you an original concept or two and has a general idea about how people act and how the world functions.
O.K., forget the script. Who cares right? Things don't have to make sense as long as Freddy is around. Do you mean to tell me that nobody tried to stop you from making Freddy look and sound like the turtle from the TOOTSIE POP COMMERCIAL!?!
Hundreds of people must have witnessed scenes being filmed with this abysmal make up and nobody said anything? No producer stopped by for an hour and just came to the conclusion that it should all be trashed and that you'd have to start all over again? You mean to tell me that everyone working on this movie thought that Freddy looked good? You're just eff'ing with me, I know it. There's no way.
God, remember Freddy's first big appearance in the original where he's chasing Tina, his arms are all spaghetti noodles waving and there's that crazy lurching frisky dash? Freddy is a trickster, a harlequin, a gremlin with a crooked smile. He's a witch, a gnarly twisted chaos demon. Do you get that he's not a whiny turtle? Do you get that much? Please don't tell me that this look is more "realistic" and more accurate to what a burn victim's face looks like because I could give a crap, I could Google images of burn victims if that's what I was after. I want to see Freddy! I know the idea was to make Freddy darker and more serious but no, you just ripped him of all his character. You made Freddy mundane. You made FRAUD-y Krueger!
If I had a time machine I would first kill baby Hitler and then I'd kill baby DAVID FINCHER. I know SE7EN is a decent flick but it has somehow single handedly ruined the lion's share of modern horror. I hate the drab, monotone, faux-gritty, phony baloney bullshit look of this movie. You mean to tell me you're going to depict scenes in a preschool and you can't even make THAT look creepy? All you'd have to do is turn a camera on in a preschool and it would be creepy but Nooooooo, we get gray rooms filled with charcoal black stick figure drawings hanging on the wall. How are we even supposed to feel awed by the nightmare scenes when EVERYTHING, nightmare or not, is filmed the exact same way? Oh my god, I gotta stop, I gotta stop, Elizabeth, I'm coming to join you Elizabeth!!!!