According to BBC News the Nightmare On Elm Street Re-make…oh wait, I’m sorry, re-IMAGINING took in 32 million in it’s opening weekend. So that means that is awesome, right?
Wrong. Sadly though, this is how the movie studio judges if a shitty re-imagining gets an even shittier sequel. I’m not jumping into that though, my beef with this film (keep in mind I’ve not yet seen it) is with the director Samuel Bayer.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past almost 30 years, then you should know what Nightmare On Elm Street is all about. You should know about Freddy Krueger and if I asked you how Freddy died in the second installment you should be able to quickly answer, “With Love”. For all you that aren’t up to speed on the Nightmare series let me break it down for you.
Fred Krueger was the groundskeeper at the local school, oh he was also a child molester, the parents of the town didn’t like that so they incinerated him in the boiler room of the school. Now Fred has come back as Freddy, wielding a clawed hand, and slaughtering the children of the parents that killed him…in their dreams.
So let’s break this down further. This premise for a film is absolutely terrifying on so many levels!
Throw a few lasers in the backdrop and you have the perfect yearbook photo
- You have the terror of the child molester.
This is just a horrifying topic for most people, parents or not. To think, your child, the one that you would do anything for, completely helpless and harmed, both mentally and physically, and there is nothing you can do to help. What makes this worse is that this all happened at a place that is supposed to be a safe environment, school.
- You have the loss of innocence.
Imagine being a child, where everything is new, wonderful, and your only worry is when you’ll be getting your chocolate milk and pb&j sandwich and what time Thundercats comes on. OK I might have thrown some personal nostalgia into that one, but the point stands. So many of us think back to when we were kids and we envy our youth. No worries, no hardships, just living and enjoying every second of it. Now imagine you were one of those kids Fred Krueger got his hands on. You now know they world is a twisted, vile place where you can trust nobody.
Not only does this affect the kids physically, but it affects them mentally. They will never be the same person they were, they will never be the person that they were originally meant to be. Now they are hard, cold, and afraid.
- You have to fight the urge for sleep.
Sleep one of the things that humans need, but scientists don’t know why we need it. Obviously it’s something that we cannot control. We get tired, and no matter how much caffeine we pump into ourselves, or how hard we try, eventually we will give into our body’s wish.
This helps build tension because it isn’t a question of where or how it’s merely a question of when, Freddy knows this, and he is patient. You know this too, so this would keep you in a constant state of fear.
Many of us don’t remember anything it is that we dreamed about, unless it was a nightmare. If you wake during a dream your chances of remembering what happened in it are greater. However, if you don’t remember your dreams or nightmares, how do you know how to control them? If you can’t control them, then you’re a sitting duck.
Notice something that’s left out of the “fear factor” in this? That’s right, Freddy. That’s because Freddy isn’t the terror of this film, in fact, he’s more of a comedian. He knows these kids are dead, and he’s just having fun, he’s untouchable.
So that brings me back to my original point with this film. Why, oh why, when you re-”imagined” this film, would you ever put the focus of fear onto Freddy?! It just doesn’t seem logical to put 100% of your “scare efforts” into one person and hoping that drives the film.
Well from what I’m reading and hearing that’s exactly what happened, and I can’t say I’m surprised. Let’s take a look at some trivia from this film. Jack Earl Haley, who in his own right is a complete and total badass, but his casting as Freddy was just a rumor he thought would be cool. The original person they wanted to play Freddy was….Billy Bob Thornton. Let that sink in for a moment please before I tell you the next bit of trivia on why this movie stinks.
Imma eat french fried potaters with ya in ya dreams…mmmmhmm.
They went through 15 rewrites, and the final draft is a hybrid of 4 of those drafts. So they basically took 15 shitty films, threw 4 darts at them, and took the meat for their film from a composite of all 4 of those scripts, who I can only assume were all done by different writers.
I can forgive all of that though, I can forgive all of it if the director was humble, if the director knew what he was holding to fans was precious, I could forgive all of this if Wes Craven would have wanted this remake…but it’s because of these reasons I cannot forgive this film.
He’s deep
The production company knew that this would be a goldmine, they knew they would make their money back even if they showed a film of Freddy taking a bath for 2 hours. It was that lack of respect that immediately tipped Wes Craven off. Did they have his blessing on this? No. Did Wes Craven publicly speak out against this remake? Yes, what good storyteller wouldn’t?
That is nothing new to the film industry though. When you’re a young, indie filmmaker just trying to eat, you will sign contracts away that pretty much screw you over more than help you, (look at everything that happened to Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes with Spaced) so everyone knew whether Wes wanted this or not it was getting done.
Super deep
This is what pisses me off though, this is what I’ve been working up to through this whole article. This director, Samuel Bay, is the biggest doucher on Earth. When Sam Raimi went about filming Doc Ock he made sure he had it right, he had it accurate, and he had it so that the fans would be happy. When Rob Zombie got John Carpenter’s blessing for Halloween, he took his time, he toiled over getting this right, doing the original justice. Samuel Bay took a shit and thought it came out gold.
This guy, whose previous work is pretty much just concert compilations of bands, has the balls to not only badmouth the entire horror fan base, but he said it to Fangoria, the freaking most credible horror news source we grew up with.
This is what Sam had to say to Fango about NOES fans:
Look, I’m gonna catch a lot of heat for this,” he begins. “But some of these fans on the web should just get up, stretch, breathe, go outside and get some fresh air, maybe get a girlfriend and just get a life. They should see the movie and make up their own minds.”
Yeah, you are going to catch a lot of heat for that Sam, and a lot of it from me. Did you know that a majority of horror movies get so popular because of message boards and word of mouth advertising? How do you think people find out about shit like “Motel Hell”, “The Beyond”, or “Night of the Comet”?
Crop’s comin’ in real nice-like. Good thing we buried all our fans, so nobody can talk bad about our movie
NOES was the same way!
Also, I understand you’re a super Hollywood hot shot now, but you need to learn to take some criticism man. If you created Freddy, and it was your baby, then you would understand. It’s not, you had a successful franchise handed to you, and you still fucked it up. Maybe you need to ingest some of this criticism and take it to heart for you next film, rather than make 5th grade level insults at the people who just bought you a new house. Ass.
Did you see NOES? How do you feel about Sam’s comment to NOES fans?
