05.04
So I recently saw the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie… (Spoilers)
The movie starts off with a bang, greeting you with the first death in less than 10 minutes, and it’s a doozy of a death. The movie keeps up with this pace, killing off most of the characters in no time flat. You seriously don’t have any time to get to know any of the characters for the first half hour to forty-five minutes. While I can understand the first guy getting killed being quick and shocking, but the rest of them should have some more to them. They weren’t used to get that first shock, these are characters that start to have plot revolving around them. These are the ones that Freddy is supposed to toy with. He’s supposed to play his cat and mouse game. Chase them around, torture them, to make them afraid. That’s what he does, he lives on their fear, it fuels him, makes him stronger. But instead of playing his games, he just kills them right away. Sure, the movie alludes to all these quick kills having nightmares, but you never see them.
This was the main thing that killed the movie for me. What is the point of having someone torture and kill people in their dreams, if you only show a few minutes of the final dream for each victim? That’s where all the scary stuff happens. Watching Nancy run around playing Girl Detective isn’t the reason for the movie, it’s Freddy. And while yes, we do need that backstory, we still need to see Freddy do a lot of freaky dream shit to everybody.
And speaking of Freddy’s back story, he got a bit of an upgrade. In the first movie, he was a killer in life. It was slightly alluded that he may have molested kids, but the real issue was his murdering of children. In this one, he is just a rapist, who for some reason, has a knife glove. You see in one flash back a kid who has a set of slashes on her back, but that’s all, none of the kids are killed until they are all grown up. He’s just a pervert who sneaks the kids down to his little basement apartment, and into his secret cave to molest them. The glove doesn’t really fit in at all with what he did in life. But then, I guess you can’t have him running around with a six pack of Zima and a box of condoms.
Once all but two of the characters are killed, you are given the chance to see Freddy do his thing with the last two while they unravel the mystery around who he is, and why he is attacking them. The kids flash back to their childhood in their dreams and they see the good side of Fred Krueger, the nice grounds keeper who helped out the kids and played games with them. You watch the parents chase him down while he screams his innocence. You watch his death at an old factory. The kids do all they can to stay awake, including stealing shots of adrenaline from the hospital. It’s all in vain however, as this is where they start experiencing “micronaps”, or waking dreams caused by parts of the brain just shutting down while the insomniac is still awake. The micronap scene where Nancy keeps flashing between the dream world with Freddy and a drug store is rather stunning, visually and scare wise. Watching the factory fade in and out of the scene while Freddy creeped around in the shadows was a part of what was missing from the first half of the film.
The film ends, of course, with the kids being victorious, then a final jump scare to show that there will always be the ever present sequel. I’d give it 3 stars. If they can get the pacing down for the kills in the next one, it will probably be really good, but I’m sure that they’ll fuck it up as they’ve been doing all sequels these days.