Review of EVERY "A Nightmare On Elm Street" Movie: First Instalment

[philosoraptor42]

As promised, here's my series of reviews of the "A Nightmare On Elm Street" franchise. This follows on from my Friday the 13th Franchise reviews which can be found in the following three parts: (instalment one, instalment two, instalment three). Unfortunately I still haven't got a copy of "Freddy Vs Jason".

I'm following the films in a bit of an odd order. I'd already seen the first film and gave a short review here, but I decided to make Part 3 my first sequel and I've also checked out the remake early to get it out of the way. As with the Friday the 13th series, I'm often quite surprised by my reaction to these films. I never seem to be quite in line with the general critics consensus...



A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

I reviewed this a while back. I have to say, one thing that made it difficult to rate it on first watch was that firstly other Wes Craven movies like "Scream" and "The People Under The Stairs" had made me disinclined to believe that I was going to like it. But perhaps more importantly, after actually watching it I wasn't all that impressed. I eventually decided that the imagery and creativity made it worthy of a "B+" but now I'm inclined to think I overrated it.

Sure, Freddy making his infamous glove at the beginning was interesting, but the girl wandering around in a nightmare was not so impressive to me. As the teenage characters are introduced we have a combination of rather poor acting and pointless unengaging dialogue. The young Johnny Depp, now so well respected as an actor, doesn't appear much better than anyone else in this film (making me suspect bad direction is responsible).



After we've spent a reasonable amount of time with the characters we get the bit where Johnny Depp is listening to the sex noises in the neighbouring room. This is where I found myself reminded of the episode of "Spaced" where Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson decide to pretend to have sex for the benefit of their upstairs landlady who thinks they are a couple.

Okay, so straight after that there's the first kill and, while the acting didn't get any better, the effects are great. And that's where I have to give the movie credit. Whenever the movie starts irritating me, something interesting does happen to get me involved. I must say though that while this might be considered a classic, it doesn't feel that way to me. In the light of watching the third film in the series (which a quick gander on RT and IMDB revealed was one of the higher rated of the sequels) I'm certainly not convinced that this first movie is the best in the series.



I'm going to have to downgrade my score for "A Nightmare On Elm Street" to....

B-

Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

I decided to move straight to this sequel because it appeared to have the best score and I heard that you didn't need to see the second movie in order to understand it. I was keen to check out what appears to be seen as the high point of the sequels before diving in and I have to say, I was not disappointed.

The effects side of things has been stepped up. The performances still aren't great, but they are definitely not as bad as in the first movie. The returning character (who I won't name to avoid spoilers) is definitely a better actor here than in the first movie. That character proves to have learnt a few tricks since the first film, leading to some interesting developments in the story.

The title "Dream Warriors" comes from the discovery by the children that they have unique abilities when they dream. The rather more contrived skill by one of them to draw other people into their dreams has the upside of allowing the dreamers to team up against Freddy.

We get some more explanation of Freddy's backstory from a mysterious nun who appears and disappears out of nowhere (in the real world, not in dreams). We also get some rather bonkers "Jason And The Argonauts" style effects (also in the real world, not in dreams). So admittedly there are some parts of this film which are a little daft (though arguably not substantially more daft than the original entry).

Another problem I had with this film was the lack of rules. Now admittedly the ending of the first film seemed to throw any rules into the air (apparently because Craven originally wanted to finish with a "the whole thing was one big dream" ending), but the problem here seems to be a more consistent case of "ghost story logic". Whether someone is doing well against Freddy or losing to Freddy seems to just depend on what Freddy feels like at the time. In the first movie, I was inclined to presume that Freddy must just be sadistically toying with the kids the whole time, but this time around he seems to skip liberally from doing whatever he wants to having trouble stopping the children with no obvious logic between the two. If I were Freddy and I noticed the dreamers were getting quirky little powers I'd choose THAT moment to start making scalding hot walls close in on them.



Towards the beginning of the film, Freddy seems to be genuinely creepy, particularly in a scene where one of the teenagers dreams he's being used like a puppet. The point where Freddy laughs and cuts the strings is extremely effective and haunting. As the film goes on, the film becomes more and more quirky and less and less scary, but it's good solid fun right to the end.



This isn't a fantastic movie, but it's still really good fun and I'm inclined to say it's better than the first entry. The effects are creative, the acting has improved, the shifts in the story are inventive and I don't think overall it is really much less scary than the original (though it is definitely less gory). I'd give this a more-than-solid:

B+

A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

Yes, I decided to check out the reboot already, but my reason for this is actually because I was expecting it to be awful. Quite a few users on the Friday the 13th remake's IMDB board seemed to have loved the remake with many even ranking it as the best of the Friday the 13th films. There was no such ambiguity about the "A Nightmare On Elm Street" remake on the IMDB boards for that. Some people said it wasn't that bad, while a large number were actively panning it. Finishing with the remake left such a bad taste in my mouth when I was doing the Friday the 13th marathon, so if this was going to be even worse I was inclined to get it out of the way early.

Now I feel like I'm in a really awkward position. I've already explained that I was somewhat under-impressed with the original, but I actually quite like the remake. Now, on the one hand I went in with massively lowered expectations for this film and that definitely made its good points catch me by surprise. On the other hand, I'm not about to pretend that this was a bad movie just because that's the more popular option.

Let's start with the bad points. In the remake everyone looks 25 when they are supposed to be still in high school. Still this isn't unique for horror films. In Halloween, while Jamie Lee Curtis was 20 her two female "high school" co-stars were 28 and 29! Even in the original "A Nightmare On Elm Street" the girl who plays Tina was 24. All the same, while in this new remake the cast are all between 23 and 25, the even bigger problem is they always look like they've just had an expensive makeover. Everyone has perfect hair even when they are running for their life. So there you go, that's the first problem.



The second problem is that at one point it's suggested that Freddy might be innocent. One of the teenagers seems remarkably insistent on it. Even in the moment, this whole idea seems silly and the film fails to openly recognise that the audience simply is not going to buy into the idea that a man who is sadistically killing teenagers in their dreams with knives on specially made glove is innocent. There's a possible explanation for this which I'll go into later.



The third problem is probably the least of a concern to me. The dream world seems rather overly concrete. Freddy has to walk over to people and there's clear distances. However, the film sees no problem with breaking the rules every now and then in order to insert some dream-like turns. I preferred the idea that Freddy has to be a little more consistent, so this really didn't matter to me.



Now, here's where I reveal the big positive. The plot makes sense....

Didn't the plot make sense before? Well quite frankly, no. If Freddy has been killed by the parents, why isn't he killing THEM in THEIR dreams? Because the sins of the parents are visited on the children? Oh give me a break!

It's never explained in the original movie why the children are dreaming about a murderer who they never met. It's never explained why Freddy has power over the children in this way. But in the remake there's a very clear reason and one that also rather neatly makes the doubts of the parents more believable too. In this remake, Freddy wasn't a child murderer, he was a child molester. The parents murdered Freddy and wanted their children to forget what happened to them and when the children start remembering, the most obvious explanation is that it is the effects of repressed childhood trauma. In the light of this, the issue I mentioned earlier can be explained away by the tendency of victims to blame themselves (though it would have been nice if the film had made that more explicit).



Another improvement is that the mechanics of dreams is explained properly. While the supposed dream "experts" in the first movie could tell us nothing about dreams other than that they are a mystery (which seemed pretty blooming unscientific) here one of the teenagers has done some proper research into the effects of sleep deprivation. It's explained that as the brain tries to compensate for the sleep deprivation, the line blurs between reality and dreaming. This really ups the ante on the threat Freddy poses in the second half of the film. The way ideas tie together in this film is actually quite satisfying. The story is far from random and the storytelling actually seems a lot more economical than the other films I've seen in the series so far.



So does Jackie Earle Haley match up to Robert Englund? Well yes and no. JEH's Freddy rather oddly seems to be missing a nose and doesn't have the same kind of look to him as a result. However, he's a great deal scarier and when he attacks he doesn't just look like he's having fun, but like he's actively sadistic. The first point where Freddy comes onto screen all we see is the glove and he rubs the blades on his gloves together in a way that suggests that he's gleefully looking forward to using them, that also attracts the attention of the dreamer, but which easily blends in with his surroundings in the dream (a kitchen full of clicking pots, pans and plates).

The "A Nightmare On Elm Street" remake is by far the scariest film of the ones I've seen so far. Remarkably the large number of lines Freddy speaks during the film do not take away from the fear factor since every line is full of sadistic evil spitefulness and only serve to make it clearer that this is a figure without any kind of pity or mercy. The changes to the plot are an improvement and the explanation for why Freddy seems to be able to attack while you are awake (see the tongue in the phone scene in the original movie) is really good too.



These supposed child-abuse victims are far too clean-cut and tidy. Heck, they are too clean-cut and tidy for real life. Also the acting isn't always brilliant (though it's no worse than in any of the other films in the series I've seen). The biggest problem for me though is the one chink in the otherwise extremely interesting re-imagining of the background of Freddy where one of the traumatised teenagers tries to suggest that Freddy is probably innocent. The whole idea is ridiculous. Thankfully I think that plays a small enough part in the overall film and can be explained as desperation and, while not handled so well here, I think this aspect is actually reminiscent of some aspects of the "Ringu" storyline (see spoiler for "Ringu" below).

(*POSSIBLE SPOILER FOR "RINGU"*
where the central characters try to stop Sadako by taking her remains out of the well
*END OF POSSIBLE SPOILER FOR "RINGU")

Overall, this film was far from perfect, but to my mind it improved on the original.

B+




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