Trailer Tuesday: A Nightmare on Elm Street

When it comes to Hollywood remakes, no genre has been subjected to "reimaginings" as much as Horror. This weekend the teaser trailer for A Nightmare on Elm Street debuted online to a highly mixed reaction. A lot of people just aren't sure, and personally I'm teetering on the border between excitement and concern.

In terms of positives - in fact, the biggest positive - there's the casting of Jackie Earle Haley (who earlier this year wowed with his portrayal of Rorschach in Watchmen) as one of cinema's most iconic boogie men, Freddie Krueger. I can think of nobody better, or potentially freakier, to take over the clawed glove, striped sweater, grimy fedora and hideous scars from Robert Englund.


My concerns however are triggered by several moments in the trailer that are lifted exactly from Wes Craven's classic 1984 original: Freddie's claw in the bath tub, the levitating teenager, the slow pan over a picturesque house on Elm Street, creepy skipping little girls and the menacing pursuit down dark, pipe-lined passages.

My point is: I'm not a particularly big fan of scene-for-scene remakes. They always seem redundant to me - if you're going to adopt that approach, why shouldn't the audience just seek out the original film that the remake is stealing wholesale from? Are the filmmakers hoping that viewers are too lazy to do this? (Don't answer this!)

Anyway, for now I'm prepared to give the Nightmare on Elm Street remake the benefit of the doubt, for a couple of reasons.


For one thing, the trailer above is just the teaser trailer after all - where traditionally filmmakers don't display all their trump cards at once. And I may be horribly off-track here but judging by the opening sequence of the teaser, the new Krueger, while alive, may not be as big a bad guy as he was in the hands of Craven and Englund. In other words, the filmmakers may actually be trying something new!

I also have to hope that the film's distinct, sinister flavour will come through more strongly in latter previews, because right now Nightmare 2010 looks a bit too generic, instead of emphasising the blurring of real life and dream that made the original film so disconcerting and distinct. For the record, the filmmakers behind the new Nightmare have promised that the film, and Freddie, will receive a completely serious treatment, sidestepping the jokiness the crept into the later films of the original series.

I'm also willing to keep my doubts in check (for now) because I'm a pretty big fan of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise as a whole. Out of all the slasher series that originated in the late 70s and 80s, Nightmare is the one I've seen the most of - 6 out of 8 films. And for the record, Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, with its disturbing Freddie origin story, is my favourite.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is set for release in the United States on 30 April 2010. I'm expecting the film to open in South Africa within 2 months of that date.