So, if you've seen literally anything about horror, you'll probably know about the slasher icon known as Freddy Krueger and his first movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street. The original movie, released in 1984 and directed by the late Wes Craven (rest in peace), was and still is a huge deal for horror. It created the perfect blend of a bloody slasher flick like Friday The 13th with the psychological torment of stuff like The Thing and IT with some creative kills and a premise that wasn't ever thought of. This movie is very important to me, and it is very important to many others as well.
The rest of the franchise, though... well... While there are some great movies in the remaining movies of the franchise, such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but the rest range from strange (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge) to overly comedic (Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare) and everything in between. He even had a crossover with Jason Voorhees.
And then there's A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), the remake of the original. I really hate some decisions they chose in this film but some ideas are decent and could've worked, but they failed in the execution. There was a lot that could've been improved, and in this series, that's what I talk about. What could've been improved about the movie.
1) Keep Freddy As A Child Murderer
If you're not aware, one of the choices they made in A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) is to swap out Freddy mainly being known for killing children (with slight undertones of being... gross) to being a straight up child predator. Not only is this stupid, it also raises so many questions.
Like, why the finger-knife glove? He never used it to kill a child in the remake, unlike the original Freddy. So, why?
How did he manage to live in the school's basement without ever being caught?
Why would he kill the kids? Wouldn't he keep doing the same thing that he did when he was alive, which is what the original Freddy did? And yes, I know he does do that one time, but he mainly kills them after he turns into a Dream Demon.
Nobody asked for Freddy to get any darker than the original (and maybe part 2) and this really ruins the movie.
So... make him just a child murderer again. Sure, you could keep undertones of that stuff just because it adds a bit more villainy to him, but make it primarily murders that got him locked up.
2) Add Some Kind of New Twist
One of my biggest problems with remakes is when they stick too much to the original and end up being a lesser version of the original. This is why the Friday The 13th Remake is generally seen as an alright remake, as it tried something new (adding in elements of the first four movies) instead of being a shot-for-shot recreation.
A Nightmare on Elm Street's remake is a victim to this problem. Still sets up Tina/Kris as the main hero, then kills them first, recreates so many shots and does them so much worse with CGI (like Freddy looking through the walls), and ultimately just bores me to death with how unoriginal it is.
Maybe that was Freddy's plan all along, eh?
But anyways, add something new! For example, they tried to set up Freddy as a wrongly convicted criminal, but then they find his basement with a bunch of photos of predatory stuff and that goes up in flames. Make it so that when they find the basement, it's just a bunch of photos of him being really nice to them, then you could have them realise that he really just loved them and then they could send him off in the best way possible by giving him a proper burial, giving us a callback to Dream Warriors.
Something like that could make this movie a lot better.
3) Fix The Kills
Just a question for all of you slasher fans. What do you want in a slasher? Cool kills? Yeah, I thought so.
Well guess what? This remake gives you almost no creative and interesting kills. All of it is just knife stabs or remakes of the original kills. The only good kill is a more brutal recreation of Tina's kill from the original, where she gets thrown about the room before being cut from neck to stomach. The rest is just Freddy talking at someone and then stabbing them.
Remember Johnny Depp's death in the original? He got sucked into his bed and then a giant tornado of blood came gushing out of the bed hole. That was amazing! Do more stuff like that which really takes advantage of the fact that it's a dream, anything can happen.
For example, in the death scene where the guy is in a boiler room, it could start having the heat increase to extreme temperatures and he faints. But he gets woken up when his arms get ripped off by Freddy.
Use more surreal things to murder someone and not...
"Wait! What if... we were to kill someone with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR knives?"
because it's really boring.
Conclusion
This remake is a pretty bad movie, and that's sad, because the original is in my top 5 favourite movies of all time, so this really disappoints me to see such a difference in quality and it's really sad that the remake is the one that Dead By Daylight's Nightmare on Elm Street DLC has used.
So, yeah, that's basically it! Thanks for reading if you did, and stay safe!
Because Freddy's still out there... waiting... for the precise moment.
The rest of the franchise, though... well... While there are some great movies in the remaining movies of the franchise, such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but the rest range from strange (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge) to overly comedic (Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare) and everything in between. He even had a crossover with Jason Voorhees.
And then there's A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), the remake of the original. I really hate some decisions they chose in this film but some ideas are decent and could've worked, but they failed in the execution. There was a lot that could've been improved, and in this series, that's what I talk about. What could've been improved about the movie.
1) Keep Freddy As A Child Murderer
If you're not aware, one of the choices they made in A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) is to swap out Freddy mainly being known for killing children (with slight undertones of being... gross) to being a straight up child predator. Not only is this stupid, it also raises so many questions.
Like, why the finger-knife glove? He never used it to kill a child in the remake, unlike the original Freddy. So, why?
How did he manage to live in the school's basement without ever being caught?
Why would he kill the kids? Wouldn't he keep doing the same thing that he did when he was alive, which is what the original Freddy did? And yes, I know he does do that one time, but he mainly kills them after he turns into a Dream Demon.
Nobody asked for Freddy to get any darker than the original (and maybe part 2) and this really ruins the movie.
So... make him just a child murderer again. Sure, you could keep undertones of that stuff just because it adds a bit more villainy to him, but make it primarily murders that got him locked up.
2) Add Some Kind of New Twist
One of my biggest problems with remakes is when they stick too much to the original and end up being a lesser version of the original. This is why the Friday The 13th Remake is generally seen as an alright remake, as it tried something new (adding in elements of the first four movies) instead of being a shot-for-shot recreation.
A Nightmare on Elm Street's remake is a victim to this problem. Still sets up Tina/Kris as the main hero, then kills them first, recreates so many shots and does them so much worse with CGI (like Freddy looking through the walls), and ultimately just bores me to death with how unoriginal it is.
Maybe that was Freddy's plan all along, eh?
But anyways, add something new! For example, they tried to set up Freddy as a wrongly convicted criminal, but then they find his basement with a bunch of photos of predatory stuff and that goes up in flames. Make it so that when they find the basement, it's just a bunch of photos of him being really nice to them, then you could have them realise that he really just loved them and then they could send him off in the best way possible by giving him a proper burial, giving us a callback to Dream Warriors.
Something like that could make this movie a lot better.
3) Fix The Kills
Just a question for all of you slasher fans. What do you want in a slasher? Cool kills? Yeah, I thought so.
Well guess what? This remake gives you almost no creative and interesting kills. All of it is just knife stabs or remakes of the original kills. The only good kill is a more brutal recreation of Tina's kill from the original, where she gets thrown about the room before being cut from neck to stomach. The rest is just Freddy talking at someone and then stabbing them.
Remember Johnny Depp's death in the original? He got sucked into his bed and then a giant tornado of blood came gushing out of the bed hole. That was amazing! Do more stuff like that which really takes advantage of the fact that it's a dream, anything can happen.
For example, in the death scene where the guy is in a boiler room, it could start having the heat increase to extreme temperatures and he faints. But he gets woken up when his arms get ripped off by Freddy.
Use more surreal things to murder someone and not...
"Wait! What if... we were to kill someone with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR knives?"
because it's really boring.
Conclusion
This remake is a pretty bad movie, and that's sad, because the original is in my top 5 favourite movies of all time, so this really disappoints me to see such a difference in quality and it's really sad that the remake is the one that Dead By Daylight's Nightmare on Elm Street DLC has used.
So, yeah, that's basically it! Thanks for reading if you did, and stay safe!
Because Freddy's still out there... waiting... for the precise moment.