Donna Rodriguez
A hard windy night didn’t stop Freddy Krueger fans from filling up the seats of the AMC Movie Theater on Thursday night.
This iconic clawed villain who is now being played by Jackie Earle Haley, Rorschach from Watchmen, terrorized the nightmares of the children on Elm Street in the 80’s and now he has returned to continue his legacy in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street which appeared on Friday.
The famous child jingle started the film to the sleepless teenager sitting at a café trying to stay awake so he doesn’t have to come face to face with the horrible Freddy Krueger.
The audience squealed as they saw this tired teen being forced to slash his own neck from side to side and later applauded when the words “A Nightmare on Elm Street” appeared on the screen in red bold letters.
A Freddy Krueger film wouldn’t be the same without the sound effects of the screeching knives against metal pipes from the boiler he was murdered in.
Even the heartbeat sound in the background as Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara) hid in the closet kept the audience in suspense.
Although the rubbing of his knives against each other was meant to be his coming call it only made it redundant as he continued to do it in every scene.
It was good to know that they kept a lot of scenes from the original 1984 film but it was changed a bit.
For instance they stayed with the cheerful children singing while playing jump rope but the children weren’t Freddy Krueger’s past murdered victims but they were the past memories of Krueger’s current victims.
They also kept the scene where Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) was lifted up from her bed, slashed and dragged across the walls in the original film but they changed it to a harsher death. The remake had Kris Fowles (Katie Cassidy) lifted from her bed and was bashed from wall to wall until she was finally slashed.
Freddy Krueger shouldn’t change he should be that same old teasing, playful, torturous psychopath with his brown hat, the red and green striped shirt and a face that left people in fear.
Yes the new Freddy kept up with his playfulness, torturous green and red sweater wearing freak characteristics but his face didn’t struck fear to even the timorous of people. His face and body movements were creature like and his missing skin looked like he was mauled by an animal not burned.
He is also meant to be hated for what he did to the children of Elm Street not shown as an innocent found guilty from the parents who chased him down and set him on fire.
The audience might not have been scared by his face but did jump and scream by his shocking appearances. The camera was good to zoom in on the actors face and zoom out when Freddy came out.
A great example of this is when the camera focuses in on Kris and as she lies back onto her bed the camera spreads out revealing Freddy lying comfortably next to her looking down at her.
Bringing back those villains who frightened the dreams of many is what horror remakes is all about. Even though the remakes of Halloween or Friday the 13th weren’t great A Nightmare on Elm Street has still proven that this burned up, slashing killer puts fear in peoples’ nightmares.